Every Hispanic Heritage Month, Chicago Latino Network shares the stories of people whose journeys reflect the talent, ambition, resilience and impact of our community.
This year, we’re proud to introduce another remarkable group of Latino leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers — each with a different story, a different path and a meaningful contribution to the communities and industries they serve.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll share their stories in their own words: where they came from, what shaped them, the challenges they’ve faced, the lessons they’ve learned and what continues to drive them forward.
Ashlee Pinto Zurita: Taking Up Space and Making Room for Others
Ashlee Pinto Zurita is Deputy General Counsel of Builders Vision, a Chicago-based family office with more than $15 billion in assets under management, where she advises senior leaders on investment, compliance, and organizational matters. A graduate of DePaul University and Stanford Law School, she began her career at Skadden before moving into investments at Valor Equity Partners and Builders Vision. Ashlee is also a 2026 Leadership Greater Chicago Signature Fellow.
A Mexican woman and citizen of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe, Ashlee brings a distinct perspective to her legal career, shaped by her family's story of sacrifice and her own path into rooms not built with her in mind.
That path began long before law school. Her earliest lessons in leadership came from home: a mother working demanding shifts as an ICU nurse, and a family business built on skill and sweat. Growing up in Chicago's south suburbs, Ashlee learned early that hard work was not exceptional; it was simply what her family did. Without a blueprint of lawyers or executives in her circle, she forged a path she had never seen up close, guided by a fierce resolve: if someone said she couldn't do something, she would prove them wrong.
For a long time, that grit was the engine behind everything. Work harder. Prepare more. Outperform. Be indispensable. It earned promotions, opened doors, and built a career she is deeply proud of. But early on, success felt like an exercise in translation: learning the language of powerful institutions and excelling within systems she had not inherited. Over time, that relentless drive quietly turned into a deprioritization of self, a work ethic trapped in overdrive.
With experience came a liberating realization: the qualities she once felt pressure to soften—her directness, her ambition, her cultural identity, her instinct to challenge established norms—were not barriers to leadership. They were the very foundation of it. Grit did not have to carry everything alone. Community could carry her, too.
She saw this clearly during her Leadership Greater Chicago fellowship. When federal immigration raids impacted neighborhoods across the city, members of her cohort sat in seminars learning about Chicago while also processing fear for their families and neighbors. It was a profoundly Chicago moment, a city revealing itself as beautiful, resilient, and unfinished all at once. Rather than retreating, her cohort leaned in, building deep trust across raw differences.
Today, Ashlee views her identity not as a footnote to her career, but as the lens through which she leads. It shapes how she listens, notices whose voice is missing, and builds authentic relationships. It also informs the example she hopes to set for her two young children and for professionals still yearning to see themselves in positions of influence.
For Ashlee, earning a seat at the table was never the end goal; the real work is widening it. Her story carries a message she once needed to hear herself: You do not have to become smaller or less recognizable to succeed. Take up the space you have earned, bring your whole history into the room, and use your influence to hold the door open for those coming behind you.
