Our Partners in Change: Marty Castro

For Marty Castro, philanthropy is a kind of family business. “For at least a couple of generations before me, we Castros have been very involved in the Chicago community,” he says. Castro’s grandparents helped build and start Our Lady of Guadalupe, Chicago’s oldest Mexican parish, and his father was a local activist and the city’s first Latino ward committeeman.

An attorney, Castro served two separate terms on the Trust’s Executive Committee and is currently president and CEO of Casa Central, one of the biggest Latinx social services agencies in the Midwest. One of his passions is expanding opportunities for Latinos to give back to their communities. He was instrumental in founding Nuestro Futuro, an affinity fund of the Trust and the largest fund in the nation dedicated to Latinx philanthropy, and continues to sit on Nuestro Futuro’s steering committee.

“We don’t call it philanthropy in the Latino community, but philanthropy is what we do every day. We support our church, our community organizations, our families back home. What I want to communicate to the community here is: ‘You’re already a philanthropist. Now let’s channel some of those dollars to initiatives closer to home.’ Latinos are very generous and charitable, and we want to harness that.”