Posted on September 22, 2026
Every year, when Hispanic Heritage Month rolls around, we sit down and ask ourselves the same question: what’s the best way to celebrate it?
InEvent is a global company, and our team spans more than a dozen countries; Hispanic and Latino voices are woven into who we are, not just something we celebrate once a year.
So this time, we wanted to do something that actually meant something.
We spent weeks looking for people doing extraordinary work across every corner of our industry and beyond it.
- Event professionals building unforgettable experiences.
- Technologists shaping the tools we all use.
- Hospitality and travel leaders welcoming the world.
- Marketers, entertainers, entrepreneurs, media voices, and business leaders pushing their fields forward every single day.
What we found was a reminder of just how much talent, creativity, and heart the Hispanic and Latino community brings to the table, in events and far beyond.
So here they are. A list of one hundred people across 10 industries, with countless stories worth knowing.
Yai Vargas – Vice President, Strategic Engagement & Initiatives, Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR)
Yai Vargas has spent her career opening doors for other Latinas. Before HACR, she built The Latinista from scratch back in 2012, a network that has helped countless Latina professionals grow their careers through hands-on workshops in cities across the country. Born in the Dominican Republic, Yai turned her own experience navigating rooms where she felt unseen into a mission to make sure other women never feel that way. Today, she leads strategic engagement and training programs at HACR, helping shape the next generation of Hispanic corporate leaders.
Sandra Noemi Torres – Founder and CEO, UNITED LATINAS
Sandra Noemi Torres built UNITED LATINAS to do one simple but powerful thing: make sure Latina leaders are seen, connected, and celebrated. With more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing strategy, she has turned that expertise into a national platform for mentorship and visibility. She is also co-publisher of Latina Trailblazers Magazine and an author, always finding new ways to spotlight the women shaping the future.
Flor Palazzolo – Founder, Civil Mafia
Flor Palazzolo built Civil Mafia on a radical idea for the ad industry: that marketing and media work could fund something beyond the bottom line. Through the Civil Mafia Foundation, the company allocates part of its revenue to fund seven or eight nonprofits every year, proof that performance and purpose don’t have to compete. She’s spent the past year on stages at Cannes Lions, arguing that the U.S. Hispanic market isn’t a niche audience anymore; it’s a $4.4 trillion opportunity most brands are still chasing with a five-year-old playbook. In 2025, Civil Mafia won the Business Impact Award from the Florida State Minority Supplier Development Council, recognition for a company built, in her words, to do business and do good.
Mariela Dabbah – Founder and CEO, Red Shoe Movement
Mariela Dabbah has a simple idea that grew into a global movement: every Tuesday, women wear red shoes to work as a signal of support for each other’s careers. She started Red Shoe Movement in 2012, after first founding Latinos in College, a nonprofit that helps Latino students find their path to and through higher education. Born in Argentina, Mariela is a two-time TEDx speaker and best-selling author who has spent decades helping women and multicultural professionals believe they belong in the room.
Staci LaToison – Founder and CEO, Dream Big Ventures
Staci LaToison spent 22 years at Chevron managing global teams and billion-dollar budgets before she decided to build something of her own. Dream Big Ventures grew out of that leap: a platform that invests in and champions women and Latina founders too often overlooked by traditional venture capital. Staci has been named Mendoza Ventures’ Funder of the Year and hosts the podcast “Her Money Moves,” where she helps other women take control of their financial future.
Giovanna “Gigi” González – Author, Speaker, and Financial Educator; Founder, The First Gen Mentor
Giovanna González quit a ten-year career in corporate finance to teach the lessons nobody had taught her. As a first-generation Latina, she had to figure out money on her own, so she built The First Gen Mentor to make sure others wouldn’t have to. Her book, “Cultura and Cash,” became a bestseller and earned an endorsement from Eva Longoria. Fast Company named her a Top 25 Creator for good reason: she has turned financial literacy into something warm, relatable, and finally accessible to the people who need it most.
Stephanie Nuesi – Founder and CEO, Max Up
Stephanie Nuesi moved to the United States at 16, speaking no English. Today, she’s a financial analyst at Google and the founder of Max Up, a career coaching company she started as an undergrad that has since helped thousands of students and professionals land jobs at companies like Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Her story reminds us that the biggest obstacles can become the biggest reasons to build something for the people coming up behind you.
Manny Ruiz – Co-Founder, Brilla Media; Founder, Hispanicize
Manny Ruiz has spent more than two decades building platforms that didn’t exist before he built them. He founded Hispanicize, the event that became a cornerstone gathering for Latino trendsetters in media, marketing, and entertainment, and later co-founded Brilla Media to keep telling authentic Latino stories on a bigger stage. From press wires to branded entertainment, Manny has built a career on making sure Latino voices get the platforms they deserve.
Sandra Velasquez – Founder and CEO, Nopalera
Before Sandra Velasquez built a beauty brand, she was the lead singer of Pistolera, a Latin alternative band that toured internationally and had music featured on “Breaking Bad.” In 2020, with no outside funding and a young daughter at home, she launched Nopalera from her Brooklyn apartment, a bath and body brand inspired by the nopal cactus and rooted in Mexican culture. She later turned down two offers on Shark Tank because she knew her brand’s worth, then raised $2.7 million on her own terms. Nopalera now sits on shelves at Nordstrom and Credo, proof that betting on yourself can pay off.
Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner – Chief Commercial Officer, GameChanger (a DICK’S Sporting Goods company)
Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner has spent her career turning marketing into a real growth engine, not just a nice-to-have. She helped launch Walmart+, Walmart’s first membership program, and later became Chief Marketing Officer at MoneyLion before stepping into her newest role leading commercial strategy at GameChanger, the app millions of families use to follow youth sports. She started her career at Nestlé Mexico and holds an MBA from Harvard. Beyond the boardroom, she co-hosts the podcast “A LA LATINA,” where she interviews Latina trailblazers about building authentic, successful careers.
Juliana Garaizar – General Partner, Portfolia Rising America Fund; Founding Partner, Energy Tech Nexus
Juliana Garaizar has spent her career opening doors in an industry that rarely opens them for people who look like her. Originally from Spain, she started in Singapore before eventually landing in venture capital, where she now backs BIPOC and LGBTQ+ founders through Portfolia’s Rising America Fund. She’s a Kauffman Fellow, a title reserved for a small, highly selective group of venture leaders worldwide, and has spent years bridging the gender gap in an investment world that badly needs more voices like hers.
Gretel Perera – Communications Leader in Tech
Gretel Perera has spent more than two decades making sure Latinas in tech are not just present, but seen. Born in Venezuela to a diplomat father, she grew up moving between countries, an experience that shaped her love for working across cultures and markets. In 2016, she co-founded Latinas in Tech alongside Rocío Medina, a community that has since grown into one of the largest networks of its kind, connecting thousands of Latina professionals across the industry. Her own career has taken her through communications leadership roles at Dell, Evernote, and Roku, proof that building community and building a career don’t have to be separate things.
Nahila Campos Pierson – Founder and CEO, Onda Agency
Nahila Campos Pierson spent over 15 years shaping digital marketing strategy for global brands before launching Onda Agency in 2025, a boutique consultancy built to close the gap between a company’s real substance and how it shows up online. She previously led digital marketing at Newlink for over a decade, working with brands like Mastercard, MTV Latin America, and WeWork Latin America. She’s also a strategic advisor to Perpetuo Capital, focused on the education sector, and a member of L500, a network of Latina executives working to get more Latinas into the C-suite.
Mónica Taher – Co-founder, CleverSlot; COO and Partner, Avanti Green Eco Cleaning
Mónica Taher has spent 30 years proving that overlooked industries hold outsized opportunity. She served as Director of Technology and Business Innovation for the Government of El Salvador, helping lead the country’s rollout of Bitcoin as legal tender, before pivoting into home services technology. She’s now co-founder of CleverSlot, an AI-driven scheduling and route optimization platform, and COO of Avanti Green Eco Cleaning, a Las Vegas-based eco-friendly cleaning company that’s grown to over 50 employees. Recognized by Forbes Centroamérica as one of the region’s most powerful women and by Bloomberg as one of the most influential people in Latin American business, she’s also a Ph.D. candidate studying communication and media at the University of Seville.
Claudia Medina – Regional Partner Sales & Business Manager, Google Cloud
Claudia Medina has spent over 20 years driving cloud adoption across Latin America, and today she leads Google Cloud’s partner ecosystem strategy across Central America and the Caribbean. Under her leadership, partner-driven sales have grown 100% year over year, built on relationships with managed service providers and resellers navigating AI, security, and modern collaboration tools. A Venezuelan-born U.S. citizen and Stanford LEAD graduate, she also serves on the host committee for the Latina Leadership Summit, helping build the kind of community she didn’t always have access to earlier in her own career.
Laura Moreno Lucas – General Partner, L’ATTITUDE Ventures
Laura Moreno Lucas immigrated to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Mexico, at just seven years old, and she has spent her career making sure other Latino entrepreneurs get the capital and support she once had to fight for. Before venture capital, she was a Managing Director at Nasdaq, where she helped lead the IPOs of companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and Beyond Meat. She also founded Ladada, one of the first fashion subscription startups to spotlight emerging designers. Today, at L’ATTITUDE Ventures, a $100 million fund built specifically for Latino-led businesses, she recently published “Latinas in VC,” a guide spotlighting 31 women breaking into an industry that has long overlooked them.
Anna Dapelo-Garcia – DEI Senior Manager, Stanford Health Care
Anna Dapelo-Garcia didn’t take a traditional path to leadership. She grew up in a working-class San Jose neighborhood with no college-going role models, and worked her way up from a clerk position to administrative director at Stanford Health Care, earning her degrees along the way. She founded Lean In Latinas, a chapter of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement built specifically to elevate Latina leadership, and her advocacy has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, and NPR. Today, she leads belonging and inclusion work at Stanford Health Care, making sure the next generation doesn’t have to climb as steep a hill as she did.
Angel G. León – Founder, Coquí Ventures
Angel G. León is a U.S. Navy veteran who went on to build something that didn’t exist before him: the first organized platform for Puerto Rican and Latino founders in the U.S. diaspora. Through Coquí Ventures, he backs underrepresented entrepreneurs and pushes for honest, practical conversations about what it actually takes to raise capital as a founder who doesn’t fit the typical investor’s mold. His work bridges military discipline with startup hustle, and it shows in how methodically he’s building access where very little existed before.
Andrés Ospina – Founder and Principal Consultant, CreateValue™
Andrés Ospina has spent 15 years helping entrepreneurs move from idea to traction, working across the U.S., Latin America, Spain, and the UK with organizations like TechTown Detroit and Ann Arbor SPARK. Through CreateValue™, he built LeanValue™, a framework centered on connecting, experimenting, and applying ideas in the real world. He also created Latino Voices in Tech™, a platform spotlighting Latino founders and innovators in Michigan’s tech ecosystem, now up for a spot at SXSW 2027 and taking Detroit’s Latino tech community to one of the world’s biggest stages.
Luza Jaramillo – Director of Security GRC, Electronic Arts; Global Communications Lead, SOMOS EA
Luza Jaramillo helps keep EA’s systems secure by day, and by volunteer effort, she helps keep her Hispanic and Latinx colleagues connected. She leads global communications for SOMOS EA, the employee resource group that has grown into a real force for representation across EA’s games and culture since its founding in 2016. It’s a reminder that leadership doesn’t always come with a title change. Sometimes it’s the extra hours someone gives, alongside their day job, to make sure the people coming up behind them feel less alone.
Flavio Morales – Media Executive; Executive Producer, JK Media Group
Flavio Morales started making television at 17, co-creating a public access show in East LA that gave local bands and artists a platform before anyone paid him to do it. That instinct never left him. He went on to help lead Telemundo’s mun2 network past three decades of Galavision dominance, won a Peabody Award for a documentary on Latino military service, and today serves as an executive producer on HBO Max’s “Like Water for Chocolate” alongside Salma Hayek. Nearly thirty years in, he’s still telling bicultural stories that didn’t have a home before he built one.
Rocío Hernández J. – Board Advisor, Global Chief Revenue Growth, BLAUTECH; Founder, HRQ Consulting
Rocio Hernandez J. spent over 25 years in leadership roles at IBM, Dell, HP, NTT DATA, and Atos before founding HRQ Consulting to help organizations manage the human side of technological risk, covering cybersecurity governance, AI readiness, and workforce transformation. She now also advises BLAUTECH’s board on global growth strategy. Throughout her career, she’s built partner ecosystems spanning Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and NVIDIA, and she carries that same belief into her community work: leadership isn’t just about having a seat at the table; it’s about using it to create room for someone else.
Sabrina Ramos – Founder and Creative Director, Pop Spark Agency
Sabrina Ramos has spent over 20 years in event production, sales, and marketing strategy, and she’s built Pop Spark Agency around a simple belief: real connection happens in person. Her agency designs pop-up events and experiential marketing campaigns for startups and growing brands across industries as varied as cannabis, SaaS, and food and beverage. She’s currently building an event series at Gotham FC games designed to connect women in business with women in sports, channeling two decades of watching people meet collaborators, business partners, and even life partners at the events she produces.
Judy Roldan-Musson – Founder, Terra Marketing Platforms
Judy Roldan-Musson moved to Nicaragua with her mother at just one year old, then returned to South Gate, California, where she had to relearn a language and a culture from scratch. That early experience of navigating two worlds became the foundation of her career: over 25 years in multicultural marketing, connecting brands authentically with Hispanic, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities. Through Terra Marketing Platforms, she’s directed sponsorships for the East LA Mexican Independence Day Parade, the nation’s largest and oldest Latino parade, and led fundraising for Niños Latinos Unidos for nearly a decade. She calls herself a “Sweet Spot Latina,” someone who understands culture not as an outside observer, but as someone who lives it every day.
Claudia Romo Edelman – Founder and Executive Chair, We Are All Human and Hispanic Star
Claudia Romo Edelman spent over two decades working inside institutions like the United Nations and UNICEF before she decided the Hispanic community needed something built just for it. She founded We Are All Human and its Hispanic Star initiative to convene Latino leaders across sectors and change how the world sees Hispanic contributions, from the boardroom to children’s bookshelves, where she now writes a biography series introducing young readers to Latino icons. Named one of TIME’s 17 Top Latino Leaders of 2024, she’s proof that decades of quiet institutional work can turn into a movement.
Mónica Ramírez – Founder and President, Justice for Migrant Women
Mónica Ramírez grew up in a family of migrant farmworkers in Fremont, Ohio, and started writing about her community’s struggles for a local newspaper at just 14 years old. That early instinct to tell the truth became a lifelong mission. She founded Justice for Migrant Women to fight workplace sexual violence and advocate for migrant women’s rights, and her open letter “Dear Sisters,” written on behalf of farmworker women, helped spark the national TIME’S UP movement. She’s been named to TIME’s 100 Next list, but her work has always started with the people whose stories rarely make headlines.
Omar Duque – President, HITEC (Hispanic Technology Executive Council)
Omar Duque has spent his career building bridges between Latino talent and the technology industry’s biggest opportunities. Before leading HITEC, he ran the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, where he helped launch an incubator that graduated dozens of Latinx tech founders and helped them raise millions in early-stage capital. Today, he leads the organization recognizing the top Hispanic technology executives across the Americas, proving that representation at the top starts with deliberately building the pipeline underneath it.
Alvaro Silberstein – Co-founder and CEO, Wheel the World
Alvaro Silberstein was paralyzed in a car accident as a teenager, and for years, travel felt like something happening to other people. Then in 2016, he became the first wheelchair user to complete Patagonia’s rugged W trek, a feat that changed how he saw what was possible. That trip became the spark for Wheel the World, a platform that has since helped thousands of travelers with disabilities explore more than 150 destinations worldwide with real, detailed accessibility information they can trust. Alvaro turned his own hardest moment into a gift for millions of people who just wanted to see the world too.
Raúl Leal – CEO, SH Hotels & Resorts (Starwood Capital Group)
Raúl Leal has spent 35 years shaping what luxury and lifestyle hospitality looks like, and he’s done it while opening doors for other Latino leaders in an industry that hasn’t always made space. Before stepping into his current role overseeing the 1 Hotels, Baccarat, and Treehouse brands, he spent a decade as President and CEO of Virgin Hotels, personally recruited by Richard Branson to launch the brand from scratch. He built five hotels under that partnership and left behind a culture built on diversity and sustainability, proof that legacy and inclusion can grow side by side.
Isaac Mizrahi – CEO, Alma
Isaac Mizrahi spent the first half of his career on the client side, working with giants like Coca-Cola and Sprint, before crossing over to the agency world and eventually becoming CEO of Alma, one of the most respected multicultural advertising agencies in the country. Under his leadership, Alma has kept winning major accounts and posting double-digit growth even in years when the industry pulled back from multicultural investment. He also writes a regular column for Forbes on multicultural marketing, making sure the business case for reaching Hispanic audiences never goes quiet.
Ana Valdez – President and CEO, Latino Donor Collaborative
Ana Valdez moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles in the 1990s and has spent decades since making sure the world understands who Latinos in America actually are, not who people assume they are. As head of the Latino Donor Collaborative, she has led groundbreaking research into the economic power of the U.S. Latino community, work so influential it landed her on Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list. Her mission is simple and stubborn: replace assumptions with facts, one report at a time.
Gonzalo Del Fa – President, GroupM Multicultural
Gonzalo Del Fa joined GroupM in 2003 as a managing director in Argentina and built his way up to leading its entire multicultural division, now overseeing roughly a billion dollars in annual billings for brands like Target, Unilever, and Universal Pictures. He’s been recognized with the Executive Leadership Award in Hispanic Television for good reason: he’s spent over two decades making sure Hispanic audiences aren’t an afterthought in how brands plan their biggest campaigns.
Oswald Méndez – Marketing Executive; Founder, Collective Transformation
Oswald Méndez has spent his career finding the intersection where culture, commerce, and media actually connect. As Chief Marketing Officer of Canela Media, he helped drive the company’s growth through its first Series A funding round, and before that, he built his own consultancy, Collective Transformation, to help media companies navigate a rapidly diversifying America. He’s held leadership roles at BBC America and helped launch entire networks like MundoFox, always circling back to one question: how do you make audiences feel truly seen?
Nina Vaca – Chairman and CEO, Pinnacle Group
Nina Vaca started Pinnacle Group in 1996 as a one-woman IT staffing operation and built it into the largest Latina-owned workforce solutions company in America. Born in Ecuador to immigrant parents who ran a family travel agency, she watched technology transform their small business firsthand, and that early lesson never left her. Today she sits on the boards of Fortune 1000 companies like Kohl’s and Comerica, one of the few Latinas in the country serving in that capacity, and she was appointed by the White House as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.
Isabel Rafferty Zavala – Founder and CEO, Canela Media
Isabel Rafferty Zavala built her first company, Mobvious, into the largest Hispanic-focused ad network in the country before it was acquired. Rather than stop there, she started over and launched Canela Media, home to Canela.TV, the first free streaming service built exclusively for Latino audiences by Latinos. She’s one of the few Latinas to successfully raise venture capital in a field where less than two percent of funding goes to women-led businesses, and under her leadership, Canela Media now reaches tens of millions of people every month.
Andrés Palencia – CEO, LatiNation Media
Andrés Palencia leads LatiNation Media, the company behind LATV, one of the first bilingual, Latino-owned media brands in the country. Under his leadership, the company has built more than 100 brand partnerships and grown its digital footprint to reach Gen Z and Millennial Latino audiences across streaming, social, and live events. He’s spent his career making sure Latino identity in media isn’t diluted for a general audience, it’s centered, in English, in Spanish, and everywhere in between.
Nathalie Rayes – 10th United States Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia (Ret.); Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council
Nathalie Rayes immigrated to the United States from Venezuela at nine years old, and she went on to become the first Venezuelan-American ever appointed as a U.S. Ambassador. Before her diplomatic post in Croatia, she led Latino Victory, expanding its national fundraising and building a pipeline of Latino political leadership. She’s been named one of the 25 most powerful Latinas in the U.S. by People en Español, and today she continues that work as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, still building bridges, just on a different kind of stage.
Lolita Taub – General Partner, Ganas Ventures
Lolita Taub built her investing philosophy around a phrase her immigrant parents used to say: “échale ganas,” put your all into it. As General Partner of Ganas Ventures, she looks for that same relentless drive in founders, particularly those building community-driven companies across the U.S. and Latin America. She’s made more than 100 investments over her career and built Ganas as one of the first Latina-led venture funds to raise capital through a public offering structure, proving that access to capital can be redesigned instead of just requested.
Eliana Murillo – Founder and CEO, Eliment and Company
Eliana Murillo spent ten years at Google, where she founded the company’s multicultural marketing team and co-founded HOLA, its Latino employee resource group. She didn’t stop building communities when she left. She founded Latinas Who Brunch, now a national network with chapters in 17 states, co-founded her family’s organic tequila brand, and now runs Eliment and Company, where she invests in and amplifies diverse small businesses and founders. A Harvard graduate and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, she’s spent her whole career making sure the people who opened doors for her never run out of doors to open for others.
Miriam Rivera – Co-founder and Managing Director, Ulu Ventures
Miriam Rivera joined Google in 2001 as its second-ever attorney and helped build the legal team that supported the company’s growth from $85 million to $10 billion in revenue in just five years. She later co-founded Ulu Ventures, a seed-stage fund known for backing far more women and minority-led startups than the industry average. A first-generation college student who went on to earn four degrees from Stanford, she’s spent her career proving that access to capital shouldn’t depend on who you already know.
Natalia Oberti Noguera – Founder and CEO, Pipeline Angels
Natalia Oberti Noguera grew up moving between the U.S., Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic before landing at Yale. She founded Pipeline Angels in 2011 because she noticed something simple and infuriating: there were plenty of white men investing in other white men, and almost nowhere for women and non-binary founders to find funding built with them in mind. Since then, her angel investing bootcamps have trained hundreds of new investors and funneled millions of dollars into women- and non-binary-led social ventures, from New York to Puerto Rico.
Cindy Zuniga-Sanchez – Attorney; Founder, Zero-Based Budget Coaching
Cindy Zuniga-Sanchez graduated law school in 2015 carrying more than $200,000 in student loan and credit card debt. Rather than hide it, she documented her entire payoff journey on social media, and in less than four years, she was debt-free. That story became Zero-Based Budget Coaching, a platform that has since reached hundreds of thousands of people, and her book “Overcoming Debt, Achieving Financial Freedom” turned her personal reckoning into a roadmap for others. She still practices law as a commercial litigation attorney, proof that financial freedom and a demanding career don’t have to be opposites.
Claudia Mirza – CEO and Investor, Fluyenta; CEO, RunMyProcess
Claudia Mirza was four years old when her father immigrated to the U.S., leaving her and her mother behind in Medellín, Colombia, in deep poverty. After losing her job in the 2002 dot-com crash, she started picking up small translation gigs to get by. That side work became Akorbi, the language and technology company she co-founded and scaled from a home-based startup into one of the world’s largest woman-owned language service providers, serving clients in more than 170 languages. In 2024, she guided Akorbi through a successful acquisition. Rather than slow down, she moved straight into her next chapter, now leading both Fluyenta and RunMyProcess, platforms focused on digital transformation and workflow automation for the age of AI. She’s been honored by EY’s Entrepreneurial Winning Women and WBENC’s Woman Business Star, and featured in TIME, Forbes, and Fortune.
Julissa Prado – Founder, Rizos Curls
Julissa Prado spent her teenage years as the unofficial “curl whisperer” of her Los Angeles community, mixing homemade hair concoctions using tricks her grandmother taught her. She spent four years perfecting her formulas before launching Rizos Curls in 2017 with zero dollars in marketing, just community love and word of mouth. Today, the brand sits on shelves at Target, Ulta, and Nordstrom, and in 2025 she received the Hispanic Heritage Award for Entrepreneurship. Her father once worked as a shoe shiner in Mexico; today, her products are sold there too, a full-circle moment she calls bigger than herself.
Daniel Marcos – Co-founder and CEO, Growth Institute
Daniel Marcos started his first company at 26 and has spent more than two decades since then figuring out what actually helps founders scale without burning out. In 2012, he co-founded Growth Institute with Verne Harnish to bring executive education to fast-growing companies around the world. He’s coached thousands of CEOs, shared stages with thinkers like Peter Diamandis, and built his teaching around one core belief: growing a company shouldn’t cost you your family or your sanity.
Deldelp Medina – Founder and Partner, Z Creative Lab
Deldelp Medina has spent over a decade building doors where there weren’t any. She co-founded Black & Brown Founders in 2018 and served as its Executive Director until 2024, running a bootstrapping bootcamp that taught Black and Latino founders how to build profitable businesses with little to no outside resources, work that mattered because Black and Latino founders still receive only a sliver of all venture capital raised in the U.S. Today, she leads Z Creative Lab, a dev shop helping founders build and secure their tech products without getting exploited along the way. Deldelp’s own name is a tribute to her mother, painter Delfina Bernal, and everything she’s built since carries that same spirit of honoring where you come from.
Karla Monterroso – Founder and Managing Partner, Brava Leaders
Karla Monterroso grew up in a low-income community with parents who made sure she’d be the first in her family to graduate college. She went on to lead Code2040 as CEO, growing its community from 25 people to over 3,000 while working to dismantle structural barriers facing Black and Latino talent in tech. Today, through Brava Leaders, she coaches and advises leaders on how power actually moves inside multicultural institutions, work she believes is essential not just for organizations, but for democracy itself.
Elizabeth Barrutia – Founder and President, BARU Advertising
Elizabeth Barrutia founded BARU in 2007 with a simple but overlooked idea: diverse moviegoers deserved marketing built specifically for them. Having lived in Spain, Brazil, and Mexico and speaking three languages fluently, she’s developed campaigns for more than 150 feature films for studios like Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Nearly two decades later, she remains one of the few industry insiders with the cultural fluency to help major studios actually reach the audiences they’re trying to win over.
Sylvia Acevedo – Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; Board Director, Author
Sylvia Acevedo joined the Girl Scouts at age 7 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where a troop leader once pointed out the stars and sparked a lifelong love of science. That spark carried her to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she worked on the Voyager 2 mission, and later to executive roles at Apple, Dell, and IBM. In 2017, she came full circle, becoming CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, where she introduced more than 100 new STEM and outdoor badges. She’s the author of “Path to the Stars,” a memoir written for young readers who might not yet believe a girl from a small New Mexico town can grow up to help send a spacecraft past Jupiter.
Carlos Gil – Author and Marketing Strategist; Founder, Gil Media Co.
Carlos Gil got his start in social media marketing almost by accident, after a layoff in the financial services industry pushed him to launch a startup and figure out how to get noticed online. That instinct became a career: he went on to lead social strategy for LinkedIn, Winn-Dixie, and BMC Software before founding Gil Media Co., a digital marketing firm now working with Fortune 500 clients. A first-generation Cuban-American, he’s the bestselling author of “The End of Marketing” and was named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential People Online, proof that showing up authentically online can build a career and not just a following.
Bernie Borges – Founder and Host, Midlife Fulfilled
Bernie Borges built the Midlife Fulfilled podcast around a belief that doesn’t get said enough: midlife isn’t a crisis to survive; it’s a season worth thriving in. Through weekly episodes covering health, career, relationships, and legacy, he’s built a loyal community of listeners over 40 who are done treating this stage of life like a decline and ready to treat it like a beginning.
Rafael Collazo – Executive Director, UnidosUS Action Fund
Rafael Collazo has spent his career turning civic frustration into civic power. He’s led the UnidosUS Action Fund since its earliest days, and in 2021 his promotion to Executive Director marked the first time someone of Puerto Rican descent led operations at UnidosUS’s political arm. Under his leadership, the organization has pushed hard on issues from COVID relief to voting rights, making sure Latino political power isn’t just discussed; it’s organized and mobilized. He also founded the “Found In Translation Podcast” back in 2013, now the nation’s longest-running independent Latino-led news talk podcast.
Jose Villa – Founder and President, Sensis
Jose Villa founded Sensis in 1998 as a web development firm, back when almost nobody was thinking seriously about the Hispanic digital market. Nearly three decades later, Sensis is a 100% minority-owned, full-service marketing agency working with major institutions like the U.S. Army and the CDC, and Jose was recently named Chair of the Hispanic Marketing Council, the organization he once aspired just to join. He’s proof that starting early in an overlooked space can turn into decades of leadership in it.
David Favela – Founder, The Latino Startup
David Favela failed second grade twice, was misdiagnosed with a learning disability, and taught himself to read at a special education school. That early struggle became the foundation for a career defined by second chances: a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to Princeton, 22 years at Hewlett-Packard, and eventually founding Border X Brewing, San Diego’s first Latino-owned brewery, which sparked a small business renaissance in the Barrio Logan neighborhood. Today, through The Latino Startup, he’s building the support system for Latino founders that he once desperately needed himself.
Miguel A. Santana – President and CEO, California Community Foundation
Miguel A. Santana started his career at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working to understand what fueled unrest in his own community. Decades later, he’s led some of Los Angeles’s most consequential institutions, managing the city’s $9 billion budget during the Great Recession and later leading the Weingart Foundation. Now, as President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, he stewards over $2 billion in charitable assets, and under his leadership the foundation has raised more than $100 million for wildfire survivors and mobilized rapid support for immigrant families facing enforcement actions.
Erica Bernal-Martinez – Chief Executive Officer, NALEO and NALEO Educational Fund
Erica Bernal-Martinez joined NALEO Educational Fund in 1999 and spent the next 25 years working her way through nearly every department the organization has, civic engagement, communications, development, before being named CEO in early 2025. That appointment made her the first Latina in the organization’s history to lead it, a milestone that reflects a career built entirely from the inside out. She’s spent her professional life turning Latino civic participation from an aspiration into an organized, national force.
Gabriela Chavez-Lopez – Executive Director, Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley
Gabriela Chavez-Lopez went through the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley’s own leadership program at 19 years old, thirteen years before she became its first-ever Executive Director. Since taking the role, she’s tripled the organization’s budget and helped it hire its first paid staff, transforming it from an all-volunteer effort into a real institution. Drawing inspiration from Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, she’s spent her career closing gaps in tech and civic representation for Latinas in one of the most unequal wage landscapes in the country.
Julie DeLucca-Collins – Founder and CEO, Go Confidently Services
Julie DeLucca-Collins spent 20 years as a senior executive in education, eventually serving as Chief Innovation Officer for an academic solutions company, before pivoting to build something of her own. Through Go Confidently Services and her podcast, Casa DeConfidence, she now helps women entrepreneurs build simple, sustainable habits to grow their businesses and their confidence at the same time. She’s the bestselling author of “Confident You” and was honored with the “25 Most Powerful Minority Women in Business” award, proof that reinvention doesn’t have an age limit.
Gisella Fu-Ripp – SVP of Sales, LatiNation Media
Gisella Fu-Ripp has spent 12 years helping build LatiNation Media into a real force in Latino media, joining back in 2012 when the company was still finding its voice. As SVP of Sales, she now leads the team connecting brands with a Gen Z and Millennial Latino audience that, by her own numbers, mostly isn’t watching traditional Spanish-language television anymore. She’s helped shape LatiNation’s entire go-to-market strategy around one core idea: culturally fluent storytelling isn’t a niche, it’s just good business.
Jorge Plasencia – Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Republica Havas
Jorge Plasencia co-founded Amigos For Kids at just 17 years old, and that early instinct to build something meaningful never left him. He went on to help launch Shakira’s crossover career while at Estefan Enterprises, then founded Republica in 2006 as a small Miami startup. Today, as chairman and CEO of Republica Havas, he leads a global communications agency working with brands like Walmart, Google, and Toyota. He was the first Cuban-American, first Floridian, and youngest person ever to chair UnidosUS, and he still calls himself a “200 percenter,” someone who fully lives both his Latin and American cultures at the same time.
Veronica Maldonado-Torres – Founder and CEO, VMT Consulting; President and CEO, Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Veronica Maldonado-Torres comes from over 60 years of generational entrepreneurship on both sides of her family, and it shows. She’s guided the growth of more than 150 businesses, built partnerships with over 130 Fortune 500 companies, and created the “Driven to Thrive” coaching framework through her firm, VMT Consulting. She now also leads the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, where she’s secured unprecedented federal funding for Hispanic-owned businesses across the state.
Susana G. Baumann – Founder, Latinas in Business; President, Excel Branding
Susana G. Baumann came to the U.S. from Argentina at 40 years old and built a multicultural marketing firm from her own home in New Jersey. In 2014, at 64, with little digital experience, she launched Latinas in Business, an initiative that has since promoted more than 700 Latina-owned businesses. She’s since moved on to lead her own firm, Excel Branding, but the platform she built continues on, proof that reinvention has no expiration date.
Carmen Fraser Youngsteadt – Director of Marketing and Communications, HITEC
Carmen Fraser Youngsteadt didn’t start out in marketing. She spent over a decade in personal and international tax before having her first child and deciding she wanted work that felt more like service. That pivot led her through agency and marketing roles across Houston before she landed at HITEC as Director of Marketing and Communications, where she now shapes how the organization tells its story. She also serves as a National Board Member for Latina Professionals and sits on the executive board of the Texas A&M Hispanic Network, proof that a career change can turn into a whole second calling.
Rosa Santana – Founder and CEO, Santana Group
Rosa Santana immigrated from Mexico at age 5 and spent 20 years building a career in corporate staffing before being unexpectedly downsized. Within two weeks of losing her job, a former client called needing help filling five positions, and Santana Group was born. Today, her group of companies spans staffing, workforce management, and manufacturing across the U.S. and Mexico, and in 2014, her company Forma Automotive became Toyota’s first Hispanic woman-owned direct supplier.
Peter Fasano – Founder and CEO, MassLogic Labs
Peter Fasano spent 25 years building marketing inside some of the biggest names in the industry, Coca-Cola, Ogilvy, WPP, before deciding he was done working around a problem he kept watching break great teams: too many tools, no system holding them together. So he left to build the answer himself. Now, as founder and CEO of MassLogic Labs, he’s building MIMO, an intelligence engine designed to give enterprise marketing teams one governed source of truth instead of a fragmented mess of platforms. In 2026, MassLogic Labs was named one of the Americas’ Best 100 Latino Early-Stage Startups by Latino Tech Week, and Peter, who proudly identifies as a Chicano founder, says the resilience of his community is exactly what gave him the courage to make the leap.
Ignacio Castro – Managing Director, Founder Institute Boston; Founder, Startup Costa Rica
Ignacio Castro earned his MBA at MIT Sloan and has spent his career building bridges between Costa Rica’s entrepreneurial talent and the resources it needs to grow. He founded the nonprofit Startup Costa Rica to support entrepreneurs in his home country, and now serves as Managing Director of Founder Institute Boston, helping launch early-stage founders across New England.
Oliver Sanchez – Founder, Stealth Startup (formerly CEO and Co-founder, Extrasense Tech)
Oliver Sanchez grew up in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, attending a school funded by a U.S. government campaign to stop the screwworm fly from crossing the border, an early lesson in just how much effort it takes to catch a problem before it becomes a crisis. That lesson became the foundation for Extrasense Tech, which he co-founded to bring AI-powered pest detection to cities like Boston and New York, replacing guesswork and poison with cameras and data. The company piloted with the Boston Housing Authority and F500 retailers before running out of runway, and Oliver made the difficult call to shut it down this year. He’s now building something new, still figuring out exactly what, but staying open to wherever the next idea leads.
Ericka Garza – President and CEO, Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Ericka Garza spent years in executive roles at YUM! Brands, 7-Eleven, and as President of Au Bon Pain before bringing that corporate strategy experience home to the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She’s been named one of Latino Leaders Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Latinas in the country, and she leads with a belief that’s simple but true: strong local businesses build strong communities.
Ruby Garcia – Leadership and Visibility Coach
Ruby Garcia spent 15 years as a Fortune 500 sales leader before discovering coaching and never looking back. She’s since helped hundreds of clients build confidence and visibility in their careers, contributed to two books on Latina leadership, and co-founded the first-ever Latino AI Summit to make sure her community isn’t left behind as artificial intelligence reshapes the workforce. Her work all circles back to one idea: visibility isn’t vanity, it’s how doors actually open.
Luzdivina Lozano – Founder, Suficiente: New Latina Leadership Development Series; Director of English Learners Program, IDEA Public Schools
Luzdivina Lozano built her career from the classroom up, spending over 15 years at IDEA Public Schools moving through roles in leadership development, principal preparation, and multilingual education across Texas and beyond. In 2023, she founded Suficiente, a leadership development series created specifically for Latina leaders, a space where women could learn in community and apply real tools to their roles as principals and system leaders. Her message is consistent and personal: your leadership didn’t start with your job title, it was shaped by your family, your language, and everything you carried before you ever walked into the room. As she puts it, excellence happens by design, not by accident.
Cynthia Diaz – Founder and CEO, Financial Space
Cynthia Diaz built Financial Space to give first-generation professionals something she wishes she’d had: financial education that doesn’t feel like a lecture. As a first-gen Latina herself, she designs her coaching and workshops to be trauma-informed and relatable, helping students and young professionals feel seen instead of judged when it comes to money. Her mission is simple: everyone deserves the tools to build the future they dream of, regardless of what financial literacy looked like growing up.
Maribel Quezada Smith – Producer, Diferente Podcast
Maribel Quezada Smith spent years feeling like she had to choose a cultural “side” to succeed, until she stopped choosing and built a show about exactly that tension instead. Diferente has run for over 150 episodes exploring what it means to live between two or more cultures, and she’s also co-founder of BIPOC Podcast Creators, working to grow representation behind the mic, not just in front of it. Her own name change story, reclaiming the correct pronunciation of “Maribel” after years of answering to “MaryBell”, says everything about the identity work she now helps others do too.
Ashley Rivera Mercado – Founder and President, Mujeres in Marketing
Ashley Rivera Mercado, born in Puerto Rico and raised in Orlando, launched Mujeres in Marketing in April 2024 to give Latina marketers the professional community and visibility she wished existed earlier in her own career. What started as a Central Florida initiative has grown into a national network of thousands of Latina marketers, advertisers, and communicators. She’s built it while working full-time in corporate communications, proof that you can build community and career at the same time.
Catalina Peña – Founder and Lead Career Coach, Catalyst Creation
Catalina Peña spent years in recruiting at Facebook, Twitter, and Asana before deciding to use that insider knowledge to help others break into competitive industries instead. As a proud Afro-Latina entrepreneur, she’s open about her own experience being fired and being told she was “too much,” and she’s turned that into fuel for Catalyst Creation, her coaching practice focused on helping Black and Brown professionals make their career dreams real.
Joe Aldaz – President and CEO, Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Joe Aldaz first led the Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber back in 2006, watched it shut down in 2009, and came back to rebuild it from the ground up starting in 2018. Under his leadership, membership grew from 22 to over 220, and the chamber was named the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Small Chamber of the Year. He calls himself a “part-time executive,” but between running the chamber’s programs and launching a Latino leadership fellowship, it’s clear his heart is working full-time.
Pabel Martinez – Founder, Plurawl
Pabel Martinez spent four years in therapy and realized the hardest days were the six in between sessions, not the one he spent with his therapist. That gap became Plurawl, an AI-powered journaling app built specifically to make mental health support feel accessible and culturally real for Black and Brown communities. He moved from New York to Tulsa to build it, driven by a simple, personal mission: to make sure people never again feel alone with what they’re carrying between appointments.
Stephanie Castaños – Director of Community Engagement, Resilient Coders
Stephanie Castaños has spent years helping graduates of Resilient Coders, a nonprofit coding bootcamp for people of color, land their first jobs in tech and build careers that last. She immersed herself in Boston’s startup and tech world back in 2014 and has stayed rooted in it ever since, managing employer relationships and professional development so graduates don’t just learn to code, they actually get hired.
Yaneiza Echezarraga – Co-founder, Twin Minds Media
Yaneiza Echezarraga co-founded Twin Minds Media in Miami to help brands actually understand Hispanic audiences instead of just translating campaigns into Spanish. The boutique PR and communications agency has grown into five specialized divisions covering everything from influencer marketing to podcast production, all built on the belief that Hispanic audiences experience culture across many touchpoints at once, not through one isolated channel.
Claudia Solis – Co-founder, Twin Minds Media
Claudia Solis co-founded Twin Minds Media alongside Yaneiza Echezarraga, bringing her own background in journalism and Hispanic media to build a firm that treats cultural fluency as a strategy, not an afterthought. Together they’ve built a team that stays small and senior-level on purpose, so every client gets direct, experienced attention instead of getting passed down a junior chain.
Ana Carolina Salazar – Founder and CEO, BOLD Digital Marketing Studio
Ana Carolina Salazar left Venezuela at 15, after losing her mother, and found her way to Central Florida still figuring out who she wanted to be. She spent years feeling like she had to perform a version of herself in meetings before she finally decided her accent and her story were her brand, not something to hide. That decision became BOLD, a Hispanic marketing agency she built from the ground up, and within four years she’d earned Orlando Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 and recognition from the Florida Governor’s office. She now also hosts the “Hablamos Spanglish” podcast, turning her own journey into a resource for others still finding their footing.
Yudy Veras Bueno – President and Coach, InspiraMe Latina Foundation
Yudy Veras Bueno built InspiraMe Latina around five pillars: connection, leadership, healing, education, and visibility. As founder, executive director, and podcast host, she’s created a space specifically for Latinas to be seen and celebrated, not just professionally, but as whole people carrying financial stress, generational trauma, and dreams all at once. She’s also the CEO of her own coaching practice, Y Veras Coaching, proof that lifting others up and building your own thing aren’t mutually exclusive.
Patricia Mota – President and CEO, HACE (Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement)
Patricia Mota experienced the education and career gaps facing Latino professionals firsthand, first as a high school student, then as a young professional trying to break in. She stepped in as HACE’s interim CEO in 2014 with a clear mission: stabilize the organization and build a path forward. She did more than that. Under her leadership, HACE’s budget has quadrupled, membership has tripled to nearly 100,000, and its reach now spans 35 states and 7 countries, turning a regional nonprofit into a national force for Latino career advancement.
José Ferrel – Co-founder and CEO, ClearMatrix
José Ferrel is building what Hispanic Executive called the GPS for the AI economy, tools that help organizations adopt artificial intelligence responsibly instead of recklessly. As co-founder and CEO of ClearMatrix, he’s positioned himself at the center of one of the most consequential conversations in business right now, helping companies navigate AI adoption without losing sight of the people it’s meant to serve.
Melissa Garcia – Managing Director, National Sales Manager, U.S. Personal and Business Banking, BMO
Melissa Garcia started her banking career in 2009 as an assistant manager at a Wells Fargo branch. A little over a year later, she moved to BMO Harris and never stopped climbing. She’s now the national sales manager overseeing more than 1,000 retail branches across 70-plus markets, and internally, she sponsors BMO’s Latino alliance employee resource group and mentors younger colleagues coming up behind her. She’s also spent five years on the March of Dimes Chicago event committee, helping raise an average of $500,000 a year for the cause.
Maria Bocanegra – President, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas (WEC Energy Group)
Maria Bocanegra was named president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas in January 2025, taking responsibility for natural gas service to nearly a million customers across Chicago and its northern suburbs. Before stepping into utility leadership, she served as a commissioner on the Illinois Commerce Commission, where she chaired committees on electric vehicles and water policy. She holds a law degree from DePaul and has been recognized as a Rising Star by Negocios Now, proof that regulatory expertise and operational leadership can absolutely live in the same career.
Christiana Yebra – Chief Marketing Officer, nVenue
Christiana Yebra’s career reads like a masterclass in reinvention: she started in emergency rooms, moved into med-tech, launched and led a dating app, and eventually landed in sports technology. As CMO of nVenue, she now helps bring predictive analytics to live sports broadcasts on platforms like Apple TV, working alongside partners including the NBA and MLB. She’s been recognized as a thought leader in millennial business and culture by outlets like Forbes and SXSW, and she’s especially passionate about pulling more young girls into STEM and sports careers.
Jorge Titinger – Founder; Board Director, Titinger Consulting / Ichor Systems
Jorge Titinger built a career as a technology CEO before shifting into life as an executive advisor and board director, work that lets him pass on decades of leadership experience to the next generation of tech companies. Through Titinger Consulting, he continues to be an active voice on governance and leadership, proof that the value of a great executive doesn’t stop when the corner office does.
Carla Robles – Director of Business Development, Real Estate Division, Polsinelli
Carla Robles has never taken the traditional path, and she’s proud of it. From a business analyst role at CBRE to a Booth MBA to leading business development for Polsinelli’s real estate division in Chicago, she’s built a career that doesn’t fit a template, and she often speaks to current MBA students about exactly that. In 2024, she was named a Crain’s Chicago Business Notable Nonprofit Board Leader and one of ALPFA’s Latinas to Watch, honors that reflect not just her professional work but her deep commitment to organizations like the Spanish Coalition for Housing and Casa Central, where she serves on the board and mentors young Latino professionals coming up in the industry.
Angie Garcia Lathrop – Corporate Affairs Executive, Global Community Opportunity, Bank of America
Angie Garcia Lathrop has spent nearly two decades at Bank of America building bridges between the bank and the communities it serves, work that led to the 2021 launch of Balance Assist, a short-term low-cost loan program, and a 2018 workforce training partnership with UnidosUS that has since reached 19 cities. Before Bank of America, she spent seven years at Freddie Mac and served as a professional staff member on the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services under Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez. She founded the bank’s Hispanic-Latino employee network in Washington, D.C., chairs the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Senior Corporate Executive Council, and in 2016 was named the Chamber’s Corporate Advocate of the Year, a career built entirely on the belief that community investment and corporate strategy aren’t separate things.
Amanda Mendieta – Security GRC Lead, Salesforce; West Coast Regional Director, ALPFA
Amanda Mendieta built her cybersecurity career the hard way, moving through Deloitte, Santander Bank, Apple, and Turo before landing her current role leading security governance, risk, and compliance at Salesforce, specifically for the company’s Agentforce agentic AI capabilities. She’s spent years balancing that technical career with community leadership as ALPFA’s West Coast Regional Director, helping run financial literacy initiatives and networking events for Bay Area Latino professionals. She’s currently working through her CISM certification, proof that even after over a decade in the field, she’s still investing in leveling up.
Dan Nieto – SVP of Growth and Expansion, Neighborhood Loans
Dan Nieto thinks about recruiting the way some people think about fishing: patient, relationship-driven, and never something you can force. Now in his fourth year at Neighborhood Loans, a Chicago-headquartered lender operating in 47 states, he’s built his role around identifying and developing new leadership while keeping the company’s founding promise intact: lend to all neighborhoods, not just the easy ones. Under his growth strategy, the company wrote nearly $2.5 billion in loans last year, over 8,500 individual home loans that started as a relationship somebody like Dan helped build.
Lina Parra Cartagena – Associate Director of Finance – Operations, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Lina Parra Cartagena has built her finance career across five countries and three continents, moving through L’Oréal, KPMG, and Novartis before landing at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where she now leads the finance function for the Biologics department. She was named a Top 2025 LatinoAmerican Executive in Finance by Hispanic Executive Magazine, and in February 2026 she spoke on Harvard’s LEAD Conference Finance and Technology panel, sharing her career journey and advocating for stronger support systems for Latina women in finance. Her focus these days includes something a lot of finance leaders are only just catching up to: using AI to make financial planning genuinely more productive, not just faster.
Roberto Arista – Vice President of Business Development, Wintrust Financial Corporation
Roberto Arista brings 23 years of banking experience to his work at Wintrust, where he helps Chicago-area businesses access everything from lines of credit to SBA loans. He sits on the board of PODER, a nonprofit focused on education and workforce development in the Latino community, and he shows up consistently at events like the Latino Economic Summit and the Hispanic Business Network golf outing, which funds scholarships for first-generation college students. He was recently named a Top Corporate Latino Business Leader by Negocios Now’s Who’s Who in Hispanic Business, recognition he credits to the mentors, clients, and community partners who backed him along the way.
Hady Méndez – Founder and CEO, Boldly Speaking LLC; Author, “Calladita No More”
Hady Méndez grew up hearing “calladita te ves más bonita,” you look prettier when you’re quiet, and she spent 25 years in corporate America unlearning that message. As a first-generation college graduate, she built Boldly Speaking to help other underrepresented professionals rise without shrinking themselves to fit in. Her book, “Calladita No More,” turns that journey into a collection of lessons built around Latino cultural sayings, and she’s been named a Telemundo “Mujer Imparable” and a Woman of ALPFA Latina to Watch. Her message is simple and hard-won: speaking up isn’t just necessary for yourself, it’s necessary for everyone coming up behind you.
Dr. Andrea Ortega – Founder, Palante Nonprofits; Founder, PhiloFund
Dr. Andrea Ortega built Palante Nonprofits to help Hispanic- and BIPOC-led organizations raise money without losing the identity that makes their work matter in the first place. She didn’t stop there. She also founded PhiloFund, a tech platform designed to help donors build intentional giving into their wealth strategy, disrupting philanthropy from the funding side, not just the fundraising side. Between hosting her own podcast, teaching as an adjunct professor, and navigating imposter syndrome as a Latina tech founder, she’s proof that you can rebuild an entire sector’s relationship with money from more than one angle at once.
Dr. Michal Tapia – Co-founder, Latino AI Summit
Dr. Michal Tapia’s doctoral research dug into something rarely studied with this kind of rigor: psychological safety among Latina professionals, the ability to speak up, disagree, or ask for help at work without fear. Her research found that workplace support and inclusion explained 40% of the variance in how safe Latina professionals feel on the job, and she built a framework called VOICES, for Validation, Opportunity, Identity, Community, Empowerment, and Support, to help organizations actually act on it. She’s channeling that same research into the Latino AI Summit, which she co-founded, and into the upcoming Latino Impact Institute in New York.
Dr. Griselle Marino – Communications and Media Director, Miami-Dade County Office of Community Advocacy
Griselle Marino came to Miami-Dade County from Cuba at age 10, not knowing a word of English, and built a career that would eventually put her across the table from Mikhail Gorbachev for an exclusive interview on the Cuban embargo. Before joining the county, she spent over a decade as a multi-Emmy-winning journalist for Univision, Telemundo, and PBS/WLRN, covering immigration, education, and issues facing underserved communities. She now leads communications for the county’s 12 advisory boards, was named a 2026 Hispanic Woman of Distinction, and hosts the “Hispanic Pride/Orgullo Hispano” podcast, still telling the stories that shaped her own life.
Karina Martínez – CEO and Co-founder, DRAFTED
Karina Martínez co-founded DRAFTED, a media brand built around sports through the lens of Latina culture, blending brand strategy with a genuine understanding of how Latina audiences actually engage. A two-time founder, she was named a 2024 HOLA Powerhouse Latina for changing the commercial conversation around Latinas in sports media. She’s spent the past year on stages talking about what happens when women lead entire industries into new territory, proof that representation in sports media doesn’t have to wait for someone else to build it first.
Harleny Vasquez – Founder and CEO, yourEVOLVEDmind
Harleny Vasquez has been “la consejera,” the advisor, since childhood, the one at Dominican family gatherings pulling people aside to ask what they really want out of life. Growing up the eldest daughter of Dominican immigrants in Inwood, Manhattan, with no family roadmap for college or career, she built that instinct into yourEVOLVEDmind, a career coaching practice originally focused on social workers and now expanded to first-gen and Gen Z professionals more broadly. A licensed social worker with over a decade in trauma-informed care, she was named a 2022 Emerging Social Work Trailblazer and a 2023 Top 13 Inspirational Keynote Speaker, and her work has been featured in Hispanic Executive, HuffPost, and LinkedIn News.
Alejandra Campoverdi – Founder, First Gen Fund; Bestselling Author
Alejandra Campoverdi has lived what she calls a life of “contradictory extremes”: a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, and once a candidate for U.S. Congress. Her memoir, “First Gen,” traces her path as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles, and it won the Dolores Huerta Award from the International Latino Book Awards along with the Martin Cruz Smith Award. In 2024, she founded the First Gen Fund, a nonprofit providing direct hardship grants to first-generation college students, turning her own story into a safety net for the next generation walking the same unmarked path.
The Voices That Keep Building
We started this list not knowing exactly where it would take us. A hundred names on a spreadsheet is one thing. A hundred real people, each with their own story of building something from nothing, is another thing entirely.
What struck us most, working through this list, wasn’t just the titles or the funding rounds or the awards. It was the pattern underneath all of it. So many of these leaders started the same way: watching someone in their family figure things out with no roadmap, then deciding they’d build the roadmap for the next person.
- A mother who moved countries to give her kids a better shot.
- A first-gen student who didn’t know the rules of the game and learned them anyway.
- A founder who got told no more times than she could count and built the yes herself.
That’s the thread that runs through every single name on this list.
We know this list isn’t complete. It can’t be. There are thousands more leaders out there doing this same quiet, powerful work in boardrooms, classrooms, kitchens, and community centers across the country. If we missed someone who deserves a spot here, we want to know. Send us their name. We’ll keep this list growing, because Hispanic Heritage Month shouldn’t be the only month we’re paying attention.
To everyone on this list: gracias. For building, for showing up, for making room at the table for the people coming up behind you. That’s the real legacy here, and it doesn’t end when October does.
About the Author / Adedoyin
