Financial expert
Age:32
Organization: William Blair
Title: Business Management Consultant – Private Wealth Management
City: Chicago
State: Illinois
After about a decade of experience in auditing, Wilfrido Hernandez knows the value of HACE to help recognize talent.
He is currently transitioning to the Private Wealth Management business unit as a Business Management Consultant at William Blair, a financial services firm.
After noticing that the firm did not have a multicultural BRG he pitched the idea and managed to get “ONE Alliance” launched in 2020, becoming the fourth business resource group at William Blair.
He served in the Risk Management – Internal Audit team at William Blair for three and a half years before making a career change to the Private Wealth Management world.
Before William Blair, he worked for Hyatt Hotels Corporation as a senior auditor and also as an IT Staff Auditor. While at Hyatt, he also served as a Co-Chair for the Latinos@Hyatt Business Resource Group.
He also served as an auditor at Allstate and served as an audit services intern at Simon Property Group in Indianapolis.
He earned his bachelor’s degrees in Accounting, Finance, and International Business from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University Bloomington. While at IU he was treasurer of the Delta Chi fraternity and served as the president his senior year. He was in the Hutton Honors College and was a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.
While he was taught to be modest and to put family first, he understands that sometimes those values don’t translate to corporate environments because they may be construed as complacency, not having a voice, and lack of drive. Having this knowledge after years in the corporate world he believes puts him in a better position to inform and educate upper management when it comes to evaluating Latino professionals and serve as a mentor to the next generation of Latino professionals.
He is an alumnus of HACE’s Emerging Latino Leaders Program, which he credits as giving him the courage to pursue his new role within the firm. He said participating in HACE’s ELLP program educated him and gave him the realization to provide motivation, recognize talent, and help it grow.
