Today, more than half of all Hispanic-owned businesses in Arizona are owned by women. But, like women in general, those numbers are not so high when it comes to science and technology-related fields.

That’s why the Arizona Chamber of Commerce is putting the spotlight on Latinas in STEM careers for its sixth-annual Power of the Purse women’s business conference.

The conference starts tomorrow, and one of the women speaking will be Erika Camacho, who teaches applied mathematics at ASU. She came into our studios recently to talk about the difficulties that Latinas often face in STEM fields and why it’s so important that they enter them.

She told me that her parents were janitors and didn’t have much of an education. And when she was in high school, she wanted to be a cashier. She thought that was the pinnacle of what she could achieve.

Then she had a math teacher in high school in Los Angeles who made her realize she could do more.