How character-based lending impacts entrepreneurs and the Houston community

For some of us, pasta is a comfort food. For Luisa Obando, it was a lifeline.

The owner of Della Casa Pasta had only one option to feed her family after her divorce: Expand her business so that the profits could support her family. But the obstacles she faced seemed insurmountable:

“I was juggling it all — the long hours, the family responsibilities and healing from a heart-wrenching emotional setback,” recalls the single mother, who started out selling her fresh pasta at farmers markets…