By Joe Stumpe/The Active Age
Ariel Rodriguez remembers the day in 2021 that Gene and Yolanda Camarena attended the auction for the former Nomar Theater building in Wichita’s North End.
At the time, the Empower nonprofit organization was only a few weeks old, without a real home of its own. Rodriguez is its executive director, while the Camarenas both sit on its board. As bidding for the historic neighborhood landmark sent its price upward, Rodriguez said, “They kept poking each other, they kept tapping each other.”
Finally, the Camarenas won the auction for the building and an adjacent structure. Then they donated it to Empower, which today provides education, workforce preparation, small business development and community building in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
Given their success in the business world, the Camarenas could have retired to a beach or penthouse apartment somewhere long ago. Gene laughs off the suggestion while explaining why they’re instead investing their resources and expertise in Empower, college scholarship programs and a host of other causes.
“One, we’re not very good swimmers,” he said. “It’s just…we grew up in a neighborhood just like that. Being able to do something there, creating opportunities, is just something that’s always been a part our lives.”
In an interview about minority entrepreneurs filmed for Wichita State University last year, Yolanda Camarena said she and her husband want others to benefit from the same kind of help they received. “I said if we ever get to the point where we are able to give back, that’s exactly what I want to do.”
To be sure, the Camarenas seem to have made the most of their opportunities.
Yolanda grew up in Wichita, where her father, Santos Barrera, ran a neighborhood bar called Snug Harbor that still operates near Lincoln and Edgemoor. Yolanda and her siblings pitched in between classes at Southeast High. “I love Snug Harbor,” she said. “We still go back there for a beer each Thanksgiving.”
College days
A first-generation college student, Yolanda switched majors three times and took 5 ½ years to graduate from WSU. At the time, there didn’t seem to be a lot of help at WSU for students like herself, but she found an important ally in Jim Rhatigan, the late, legendary dean of students. “He was my mentor and became my mentor almost my whole career.”
She was also influenced by Project Together, a 1970s-era community movement. “It was a very social awakening both for the black community and the Latina community that got me really involved in knowing more about our community and what I wanted to do.”
Gene grew up on Salina’s predominantly black and Hispanic north side, where his grandmother, a Mexican immigrant, managed to earn enough as a cook and housekeeper to send 11 children to college. Originally planning to become a priest or doctor, Gene instead became interested in business while earning an accounting degree from the University of Kansas.
Yolanda was working in student admissions for Newman University when the two began dating. When she took a job at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Gene followed her to Cambridge, Mass., earning a graduate degree from Harvard Business School.
After returning to Wichita, the two started a family, and Gene took a job with Pizza Hut corporate headquarters, which were then located here. While he was making a good salary, he soon realized that franchisees “make a lot of money” and decided to bid on eight underperforming Pizza Huts in the Texas Panhandle. At the time, the couple had a 2-year-old daughter, and Yolanda was two months pregnant. She told her husband to go for it.
“He didn’t go to business school to just keep doing what he was doing — the 8-to-5 thing,” she said.
Going into business
And indeed, for the next eight or nine years, Gene left Wichita on Monday for the six-hour drive to Amarillo and didn’t return until Friday night. He bought a dozen more Pizza Huts and then entered the hotel business as well, as a franchisee for Marriott with multiple locations.
His next big move was buying 65 Pizza Huts in the Indianapolis market. With additional real estate, banking and investment holdings, Camarena’s company, La Raza Pizza, Inc., ranked among the 150 largest Hispanic-owned businesses in the nation.
Looking back, Gene says the pizza business was a lot less competitive when he entered it. Not that it was easy. Their younger daughter likes to remind him that he missed her birth when she arrived prematurely during one of his business trips.
The Camarenas have since sold the Indianapolis Pizza Huts and some of the hotels, enabling Gene to spend about “30 to 40 percent” of his time on volunteer community projects. “That’s not a 40-hour work week,” he clarified, “more like an 80-hour week.”
One of the couple’s biggest efforts was establishing the Adelante (Spanish for “forward”) Scholarships at WSU, part of their $1 million gift to the school. First awarded in 2021, the scholarships are given to a cohort of about 20 freshmen and transfer students every four years. The idea is to give them “a sense of community,” with graduates serving as mentors to the next round of recipients, Yolanda said. The couple set up smaller scholarship programs at Butler Community College and Newman University.
In 2024, the Camarenas served as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at WSU’s Barton School of Business. They gave a keynote address in Woolsey Hall, kept office hours, participated in classes and student organizations and collaborated with the school’s faculty and leadership.
Gene has also served as chair of Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Pizza Hut Foundation and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which provides more than $30 million in scholarships nationally. He’s a board member of United Way of the Plains, the KU Endowment Board of Trustees and Hispanics in Real Estate. Yolanda serves on the boards of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, Newman University, Phillips Fundamental Learning Center and WSU’s National Advisory Council.
Empower expands
Empower’s focus is the North End, where Wichita’s biggest concentration of Hispanic residents has lived since the 1920s. In April, Empower held a grand opening for new headquarters at 101 E. 21st N. 21st St., next door to the Nomar Theater building. The center — a stylish down-to-studs rebuild of the former Basham furniture store — is named the Camarena Adelante Center.
The center bears the couple’s mark with its emphasis on helping area residents enter the food business: More than half the building is a completely furnished commercial kitchen space that can be rented by food truck operators, caterers and other entrepreneurs.
Janet Miller, a former City Council member who recruited the Camarenas onto Empower’s board, called them “extraordinarily generous and so committed to their work within the Hispanic community and beyond. They give of both their time and treasure to help individuals and families reach their full potential and live their best lives. Their work in the community is very focused and interconnected toward this goal.”
At the grand opening, Gene Camarena heaped praise on his fellow board members and the Empower staff. And he predicted that Phase 2 of Empower’s plan for the area, which includes transforming the theater into a multiuse space, is not far off. It “is going to make this area look a lot different than it does someday,” he said.
“We’re not done yet. We’ve got more things to do.”
This article was republished here with the permission of: The Active Age