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Gladys Gonzalez, whose business skills and support helped hundreds of Utah entrepreneurs through the Pete Suazo Business Center she founded, has died.

Gonzalez died July 23, a few days before her 80th birthday, the Suazo Business Center shared Monday on LinkedIn. No cause of death was noted.

“She was just this dynamic woman,” the center’s current CEO, Silvia Castro Bennett, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday. “Her passion was very evident, in terms of the work in the community.”

Castro Bennett said that when she took the center’s reins in 2017, after Gonzalez had retired to live near her daughter in Texas, “I first started to understand her vision” went beyond helping people start a business.

The center, Castro Bennett said, exists “because of her stubbornness, because she was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. She believed in the power of what the center could do.”

Its offices on Salt Lake City’s west side and in Ogden aided nearly 1,500 existing businesses in fiscal 2025 and helped launch 246 new ones, generating more than $53 million in revenue, according to the center’s most recent annual report.

Gonzalez worked as a bank executive in her native Colombia until her family moved to Utah in 1991, out of concern for their safety. In the U.S., her first job was with a janitorial service.

Together, she and her daughter in 1993 launched a bilingual newspaper, Mundo Hispano (Hispanic World). Gonzalez received help from Utah State Sen. Pete Suazo to develop a business plan and get a loan, according to the center’s LinkedIn post.

The paper, which was published through 2009, became a voice for Utah’s Latino community. When it and other small news outlets were denied press credentials to the 2002 Winter Olympics, Gonzalez told The Tribune she wondered “how we are supposed to bring the flavor of the Games to our community and make our readers feel a part of it.”

When Suazo died in 2001, Gonzalez launched the business center in his name, according to the center’s post. It opened in 2003 in Salt Lake City’s Marmalade neighborhood, aimed at helping Latino entrepreneurs establish a business.

Zions Bank invested $25,000 in the center’s first year and another $25,000 in its second. Zions also placed two bank employees — a loan officer and an assistant — to work with clients there, The Tribune reported at the time.

Scott Anderson, retired president and CEO of Zions Bank, said in a statement this week that “our community has lost a voice of reason and optimism and hope with Gladys’ passing.”

Anderson, the founding chair of the Suazo center’s board, said Gonzalez “was a savior and a hero to thousands of small business owners. She was my hero and example of how to give a helping hand to those in need.”

Gonzalez told The Tribune in 2003 that “we will help everyone. … If someone who isn’t a minority comes through our doors, we will help them, too.”

Castro Bennett said that expansive view of the center’s mission continues. “For her, it wasn’t just about Latinos. It wasn’t just about immigrants,” Castro Bennett said.

It also wasn’t about simply starting a business, she said.

“It was about self-reliance,” Castro Bennett said. “It was about the generational wealth component. … Starting the business is the tool.”

In March, the center’s Salt Lake City building was renamed in Gonzalez’s honor.

“Gladys represents what our clients are like,” Castro Bennett said. “People who are underestimated, people without resources, people who are incredibly capable if somebody believes in them.”

Memorial services for Gonzalez have not been announced.