Skip to main content

Free to members: Planning your firm's FinCEN filing strategy - Oct. 21

Hispanic Heritage Month Spotlight: Sabino Arredondo

October 10, 2024

Hispanic Heritage Month

To center diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we invited OSCPA members to share their personal and professional experiences with culture and identity.

 

 

Sabino Arredondo
Wilcox Arredondo & Co., Canby

How do you define your identity?
I am a Mexican American and proud of my heritage. I was born in a small farming village in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico and lived without electricity or running water for the first six years of my childhood. I saw firsthand how hard my family worked to survive.

I immigrated to Oregon in 1981 when I was 10 years old. My family moved to a farming community outside Canby. I was in fifth grade at the time and attended school in the Canby School District. I didn’t know how to speak or read English and, as you can imagine, the first few months of school were very hard. My family was your typical migrant family: I attended school during the school year, but the summers were spent picking strawberries, berries, and other field crops. Since my family was one of the few Hispanic families in the Canby School District, there were limited resources available to help us get assimilated. In retrospect, this pushed me to learn to speak and read English to adapt to school and the community. 

What is your favorite cultural dish?
As a Mexican family, our family has lunch at my parents’ house every Sunday afternoon. We enjoy homemade corn tortillas, enchiladas, pozole, and many other Mexican dishes on a weekly basis. Our family has been doing this for 30 years and we treasure those moments and memories.

How did your upbringing influence your accounting journey and approach to business?
The value of hard work was instilled in me from a young age. I was fortunate that my parents valued education and pushed me to work hard in school. I was the first in my extended family to attend and graduate from college. My parents only have a second-grade education. My mom speaks limited English, while my dad doesn’t speak English at all. I saw my parents sacrifice each day to provide us with opportunities to better ourselves. This led me to find accounting in high school which was a natural fit for me. 

What is unique about your firm, Wilcox Arredondo?
Wilcox Arredondo is as unique as the community we serve. We have a Mexican managing partner and a female partner. Our staff includes members from different backgrounds, which allows us to easily identify with our clients and our community. We believe in making all our clients feel welcome, which is part of my heritage.

How do you honor your culture in your daily life? 
This is not difficult at all. We have staff, clients, and family members that share the same culture. It is with pride that we serve all of them and interact with them daily.

How can we, as a CPA community, better support aspiring Hispanic professionals? 
My family loves to hear and tell stories of our journey. 

If we can provide young Hispanic professionals with the opportunity to hear success stories of CPAs that they can identify with, it may inspire them to follow in their footsteps. I love to share my story, and I will never forget where I came from. If my story can inspire other Hispanics, I am proud to share it.   

Read more on DEI