Before "entrepreneur" was a fashionable label, at a time when female business icons were rare, in a culture of deep discrimination along racial and gender lines — Romana Acosta Bañuelos broke every mold in the book. She has, in the course of her amazing life, been a banker. A founder of companies. A matriarch, philanthropist, the Treasurer of the United States. She's been a champion of her community and a pioneer in bringing the foods of her Mexican heritage, and thereby Mexican culture in general, into the homes and hearts of America.

But every success has been an unlikely one, fraught with setbacks and challenges, from the moment Romana was born in Arizona in 1925 — delivered on the proverbial doorstep of the country's Great Depression. And the battle was only uphill from there.

In the early 1930s the Acosta family was one of many "repatriated" en masse to Mexico by the US government. The economy was falling apart and anti-minority sentiment had begun to take hold of a beleaguered American workforce, and so Romana, age 8, found herself suddenly and indefinitely living south of the border. She would not return to the US for a decade.

But in those formative years in Mexico Romana learned lessons that would transform her, setting in motion a chain of successes far out of proportion to her humble beginning. She learned the methods and recipes of true Northern Mexican cuisine passed down from her relatives, and the dogged work ethic of her mother — of whom Romana was a constant student. This drive and determination would in time carry her to the highest echelons of business and public service.

When Romana finally returned to the United States she was 18, the single mother of two young boys, and desperately poor. (She was a penny short of the fee to cross from Juárez over the Texas border, and to this day picks up pennies she finds on the street, never forgetting the depths from which she climbed.) If nothing else, though, Romana had ambition, with dreams of owning her own business. She settled in Los Angeles and remarried, saving to finally strike out on a venture of her own: A tiny tortilla factory near what's now the Hollywood Freeway. The business grew quickly and diversified, expanding to meet the demand of a hungry clientele, but never compromising its authentic flavors and recipes. The company, Ramona's Mexican Food Products, Inc., was incorporated in 1947 and — seven decades later — it continues to thrive, owned and led to this day by the Bañuelos family.

Romana's next act came in 1963, when she partnered with a group of Los Angeles businessmen to found the Pan American National Bank. Their mission: To empower Latino entrepreneurs, providing them financial support to start businesses of their own and expand their influence in the community. The bank was another phenomenal success for Romana, who eventually rose to chair its Board of Directors until, in 1970, the next grand opportunity came calling.

Following his election to the presidency that year, Richard Nixon personally chose Romana to join his cabinet as Treasurer of the United States. She became the highest-ranking Mexican-American in government, serving until 1974 before returning home to tend to her own thriving businesses, a growing family, and philanthropic efforts in and around Los Angeles. Romana left her mark as the nation's 34th Treasurer and the first Hispanic American to hold the office.

Today Romana still lives in Los Angeles, home to the companies she founded and several generations of family. It's hard to overstate the scale of what she has achieved in her nearly 90 years, or the degree to which the odds were stacked against her. Her story is a model for entrepreneurs, mothers, men and women of any background with a vision and the drive to realize it, from a penny short in Juarez to the White House and beyond.