Romana Acosta Bañuelos

Bañuelos, Romana Acosta (1925– ), U.S. treasurer (1971–74) under President Nixon, first Mexican-American woman to hold high government office. She began her business career in 1949 with a small tortilla stand and built it into a $5 million food company. She was the founder (1964) of the first U.S. bank owned and operated by a Mexican American, the Pan American Bank of East Los Angeles. In 1969 she established a Mexican-American student scholarship.