Carlos Huerta Wins $50,000 2024 Locke Innovative Leader Award

Carlos Huerta (MBA ’19, BA ’13), executive director of the Center for Community Transformation, is one of five winners nationally of the 2024 Locke Innovative Leader Awards, sponsored by Wesleyan Impact Partners. The CCT offers programs in social entrepreneurship, financial literacy, ministry leadership training and soft-skills job training.

“Huerta embodies loving your neighbor as yourself and is dedicated to teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship courses through a theological lens in Spanish,” according to the January 23, 2024, announcement.

Each award honoree receives a $50,000 stipend and becomes part of a learning community to nurture their spirit and mission. To date, Wesleyan Impact Partners has invested nearly $1 million in Locke Innovative Leaders.

“These five spiritual innovators are creating new ways to transform lives and neighborhoods through asset-based community development, creative partnerships, social entrepreneurship, and capacity building,” the award announcement said. The group describes itself as “a national nonprofit dedicated to investing in growing the church’s impact and nourishing the communities it serves.”

“The Locke Innovative Leader Award was created to honor and embolden innovators across the Wesleyan ecosystem who create new practices and ministries that help more people experience God’s love,” said Rev. Lisa Greenwood, president and CEO of Wesleyan Impact Partners. “This year’s honorees deeply embody that innovative spirit, demonstrating what it means to engage our neighborhoods and change systems at the grassroots level.”

About Wesleyan Impact Partners

For more than 55 years, Austin-based Wesleyan Impact Partners has made loans to empower churches and lift up courageous spiritual entrepreneurs.