Linda Caballero Merritt has strengthened the Hispanic Chamber’s business and outreach programs. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

At some point in the last decade or so, growing up Tijuanense has become an asset for some people advancing in San Diego’s executive corps, and this likely will become more obvious and advantageous in time. Most Anglo children in San Diego don’t grow up bilingually and don’t get nearly the exposure to Mexican culture that Mexicans enjoy of Americans.

“Being a fronteriza (someone living along the border) means you have a unique perspective on life,” says Linda Caballero Merritt. “You’re very flexible, very adaptable, resilient and resourceful; you straddle these two worlds… It makes you more keenly aware and more receptive to ideas. You have to navigate these very different environments. So you develop certain skills.”

Whatever they are, Linda Merritt’s got ’em.

What does she want?

“Access to the marketplace, fair and equitable access to the marketplace for small businesses,” says Merritt, president of the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the largest Latino chamber in the West. “The way we’re doing that is through procurement initiatives like DEVO.”

DEVO stands for the Diverse Emerging Vendor Outreach program, a creation of the Hispanic Chamber that’s been embraced by other chambers including the Asian Business Association, National City Chamber and Filipino-American Chamber, and by most of the larger local governments in San Diego. Fill out their forms and qualify as a small, woman- or minority-owned business, and local governments are more likely to use your products or services. There’s no guarantee of commerce, but local governments have awarded some $55 million in contracts to DEVO participants since its inception in 2001. Not bad for starters.

Almost a year into her presidency, Merritt is now looking at DEVO as a prototype and expects to persuade large corporations to participate in a similar program that will give small businesses a crack at corporate jobs.

Along the way, she’s also strengthened the Hispanic Chamber’s relationship with the Small Business Administration and the Service Corps of Retired Executives, is analyzing health insurance programs that would pool her 970 members and maybe her 1,300 DEVOtees, and has established a prototypical business-promotion agreement with the Rosarito Beach CANACO chapter that she hopes to emulate with Ensenada and other Baja chambers. She has become active in the Latino Policy Institute, a think tank and clearinghouse for people interested in soliciting the support of Latino leaders without having to troop to a dozen different Hispanic organizations to get out the word.

Meanwhile, she and her staff of six colleagues, working out of the World Trade Center Building at Sixth Avenue and A Street in Downtown San Diego, continue staging and refining the Hispanic Chamber’s signature services and events, the Mariachi Festival in August, the Latina Success Conference with MANA, the annual dinner gala now called Iluminada, and the 30 scholarships being handed out this month to college-bound Hispanics.

She promotes and protects her board – Chairman Gustavo Bidart of Citibank “is very strong,” she says – and she is not too intimidated to concede the “disappointing” performance of the once-rising Latino political star, Ralph Inzunza, who along with San Diego City Council colleagues Donna Frye and Jim Madaffer declined to allocate a portion of federal Community Development Bloc Grants to the Hispanic Chamber. The $83,500 in CDBG funds received by the Hispanic Chamber to run DEVO in fiscal 2005 will be cut to $48,500 in ’06, despite Merritt’s $140,000 budget request.

“You want to create awareness of your community, not negative awareness,” she says of Inzunza and his recent difficulties. She still thinks highly of his brother, Nick, the National City mayor.

Merritt seems well positioned to lead the 16-year-old Hispanic Chamber for years to come. A former marketing executive for the San Diego Workforce Partnership, she succeeded Eduardo Landeros last August after a nationwide search. The soft-spoken, gentlemanly Landeros, who joined his family’s candy factory in Tijuana, served as an interim executive following the departure of Robert Villarreal, the Hispanic Chamber’s first professional, fulltime chief executive. Villarreal, who left to join Bank of America, now works for the CDC Small Business Finance Corp.

Merritt and her 6-year-old daughter live in Golden Hill.