Osage tribal member, Luanne Casillas, was appointed Honorary Mayor of Westchester by the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce in June.
The announcement was made in Marina del Rey at the chamber’s annual Installation Gala Awards. Westchester, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, has a population of over 42,000 people. Casillas’ tenure as Honorary Mayor began on July 1.
Casillas has advocated for women in business for years. She has developed women’s advocate groups including Blend2Day and serves as a co-chair of the Women’s Lifestyle Committee. She was a board member of the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce for three years, before becoming Honorary Mayor.
She is also a living benefit and guaranteed income specialist with the Financial Concepts of America, an independent agent and broker.
As Honorary Mayor, Casillas has several duties within LAX. This includes working with the community and new businesses, as well as businesses celebrating anniversaries.
“I do a lot of public speaking,” Casillas said. “All of the new businesses that come into town I work with them; we’ll do ribbon cuttings for them and with the local government, I’ll be at their events as well.”
In addition to ribbon cuttings, she leads the Pledge of Allegiance at events and rides in the 4th of July parade.
Vice President of Business Relations at the Coastal Chamber of Commerce, Mary-Catherine Micka, met Casillas when Micka was hired in April 2022. They met while pulling weeds and cleaning up the Ballona Wetlands in L.A. County. While Micka and Casillas have known each other for a short time, Micka has seen some of the many things Casillas has done.
“She has been on the board of the chamber and also she is one of the co-chairs of Women in Business, and I am the staff lead on that,” Micka said. “This year she was the chairman of the board.”
With LAX being a large area with many different towns and communities, there is not an official mayor over the whole Los Angeles community as a whole. Casillas is Honorary Mayor over a portion of Los Angeles County that includes Westchester. The Coastal Chamber of Commerce has around 700 businesses between Los Angeles and other cities in California, as well as other states.
The board chair nominates an Honorary Mayor every year, and Casillas was voted in by the board this year.
“It was so exciting,” Casillas said. “It’s really exciting to see your peers care about what you do and your impact on the community, and that is really important to me.”
Casillas’ traits within business and the service she shows to the LAX community made her a great candidate for the Honorary Mayor.
“She just personifies a leader in the community,” Micka said. “She has the personality that is so warm and welcoming and helpful. She’s just a really good representative of our chamber and our community.”
Casillas’ work through her business Blend2Day, FCA Agency, and the community has helped her gain her role.
“I started this career 13 years ago,” she said. “I started Blend2Day in the second year and it was out of a need. And the need was the business that I’m in was highly male-dominated. To me, everything is about building relationships. If you don’t build the relationship, why would you give me your money? That’s basically how I looked at it. I find that many might have a retirement strategy set up, but Living Benefits are a gap filler. When an ‘unexpected’ illness arises you have to have a pool of tax-free income to use as 67% of bankruptcy in America is due to health issues.”
Casillas wanted to create alliances within businesses, and with those relationships, they can refer business to each other. This also helps in situations where women lose their jobs and can be referred to another company that may be looking for someone to meet the expectations of a job role.
“I wanted to make an impact on women in business because we speak and think differently,” she said. “Blend2Day is an acronym for Balance, Life, Educate, Network, Dream today. As women, our lives are full. Balance isn’t always achievable or realistic, and that’s okay. Networking is important for our businesses to keep ourselves relative. We tend to put ourselves behind, meaning any of our dreams, either personal or business. Just trying to engage women to keep that in the forefront, the things you want to have and the things that you haven’t actually taken care of in recent times.”
Juggling a family and working full time, or having a business is often a struggle for many women. Some women often feel as if they have too much to do in so little time.
“We live in a sandwich generation society where a lot of women are having to deal with aging parents as well as raising kids,” she said. “A lot of women lose their careers because of it.”
Casillas experienced some of these similar things last year when her dad and aunt passed away, and she had to put her career on hold.
“It was just one of those ‘wow I’m living what I talk to people about’ kind of things,” she said. “Blend2Day I always lead with that because that’s how I meet women and create networking groups to help support each other.”
Her work with the Women’s Lifestyle committee of LAX has helped her create a network of women in different forms of business from executives to construction companies to small businesses.
Casillas is a Retirement and Living Benefits Specialist working with many businesses and individuals in multiple states. Blend2Day offers multiple streams of protection.
Yvonne Kobler has been friends with Casillas for over 20 years and met through a mutual friend. Kobler has used Casillas’ financial services and has several annuities and a life insurance policy with her.
“She had mentioned it to me several times,” Kobler said. “When my mom passed away, I contacted her and said, ‘let’s do this and get something going here’ with my inheritance.”
Casillas was able to help Kobler invest her money and get everything in order for her future.
“She answered all my questions, she came up with suggestions and ideas that I hadn’t thought of,” Kobler said. “She was also compassionate because she also knew my mother.”
Casillas is the great-great-granddaughter of Chief Bacon Rind (Wah-she-hah, Star-That-Travels) and a lifetime member of the United Osages of Southern California. While she grew up in California, she has always visited her family in Pawhuska. However, living halfway across the country makes it more difficult to stay involved with all the cultural events.
“My personal desire has always been to help our tribe save on benefits so they can reallocate the savings to other programs for our people,” she said. “It’s not easy being so far away. Today we have many products that can be life-changing for everyone in the best possible way. My goal was to help with benefits in the tribe, and help save money overall and diversify money so that they’re saving more.”
She will make the drive to San Diego to attend the UOSC meeting on Oct. 6. The California Osages usually have lunch, listen to elected officials give updates and get to know each other.
Casillas’ hard work within her businesses and advocacy has paid off, and she cares about serving those in her personal and professional life, but also serving the LAX community as a whole.
“She is so kind, so smart and fun,” Micka said. “Always has a smile and a laugh. She’s seriously one of my favorite people ever. I adore her. She’s just an all-around great person and everybody loves Luanne. There’s no one who doesn’t like Luanne.”
Casillas hopes to impact other people through her role as Honorary Mayor.
“I want them to feel welcome to the community, that’s important,” she said. “It’s a huge part of what I do. Just getting new businesses and new people coming into the communities involved, because I think involvement is what’s going to help a small business succeed. For me, being able to say this is how I can help you with exit strategies for your business, just creating relationships so I can share who I am and what I do as well.”
