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Every 12 months, when Hispanic Heritage Month rolls round, we sit down and ask ourselves the identical query: what’s one of the best ways to rejoice it?
InEvent is a worldwide firm, and our group spans greater than a dozen international locations; Hispanic and Latino voices are woven into who we’re, not simply one thing we rejoice every year.
So this time, we wished to do one thing that truly meant one thing.
We spent weeks in search of individuals doing extraordinary work throughout each nook of our trade and past it.
- Event professionals constructing unforgettable experiences.
- Technologists shaping the instruments all of us use.
- Hospitality and journey leaders welcoming the world.
- Marketers, entertainers, entrepreneurs, media voices, and enterprise leaders pushing their fields ahead each single day.
What we discovered was a reminder of simply how a lot expertise, creativity, and coronary heart the Hispanic and Latino group brings to the desk, in occasions and much past.
So right here they’re. A listing of 100 individuals throughout 10 industries, with numerous tales value realizing.
Yai Vargas – Vice President, Strategic Engagement & Initiatives, Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR)
Yai Vargas has spent her profession opening doorways for different Latinas. Before HACR, she constructed The Latinista from scratch again in 2012, a community that has helped numerous Latina professionals develop their careers by hands-on workshops in cities throughout the nation. Born within the Dominican Republic, Yai turned her personal expertise navigating rooms the place she felt unseen right into a mission to ensure different girls by no means really feel that means. Today, she leads strategic engagement and coaching packages at HACR, serving to form the subsequent technology of Hispanic company leaders.
Sandra Noemi Torres – Founder and CEO, UNITED LATINAS
Sandra Noemi Torres constructed UNITED LATINAS to do one easy however highly effective factor: be sure that Latina leaders are seen, linked, and celebrated. With greater than 20 years of expertise in gross sales and advertising and marketing technique, she has turned that experience right into a nationwide platform for mentorship and visibility. She can also be co-publisher of Latina Trailblazers Magazine and an creator, at all times discovering new methods to highlight the ladies shaping the longer term.
Flor Palazzolo – Founder, Civil Mafia
Flor Palazzolo constructed Civil Mafia on a radical thought for the advert trade: that advertising and marketing and media work might fund one thing past the underside line. Through the Civil Mafia Foundation, the corporate allocates a part of its income to fund seven or eight nonprofits yearly, proof that efficiency and function don’t need to compete. She’s spent the previous 12 months on levels at Cannes Lions, arguing that the U.S. Hispanic market isn’t a distinct segment viewers anymore; it’s a $4.4 trillion alternative most manufacturers are nonetheless chasing with a five-year-old playbook. In 2025, Civil Mafia received the Business Impact Award from the Florida State Minority Supplier Development Council, recognition for a corporation constructed, in her phrases, to do enterprise and do good.
Mariela Dabbah – Founder and CEO, Red Shoe Movement
Mariela Dabbah has a easy concept that grew into a worldwide motion: each Tuesday, girls put on pink sneakers to work as a sign of help for one another’s careers. She began Red Shoe Movement in 2012, after first founding Latinos in College, a nonprofit that helps Latino college students discover their path to and thru greater schooling. Born in Argentina, Mariela is a two-time TEDx speaker and best-selling creator who has spent many years serving to girls and multicultural professionals imagine they belong within the room.
Staci LaToison – Founder and CEO, Dream Big Ventures
Staci LaToison spent 22 years at Chevron managing international groups and billion-dollar budgets earlier than she determined to construct one thing of her personal. Dream Big Ventures grew out of that leap: a platform that invests in and champions girls and Latina founders too typically missed by conventional enterprise capital. Staci has been named Mendoza Ventures’ Funder of the Year and hosts the podcast “Her Money Moves,” the place she helps different girls take management of their monetary future.
Giovanna “Gigi” González – Author, Speaker, and Financial Educator; Founder, The First Gen Mentor
Giovanna González stop a ten-year profession in company finance to show the teachings no person had taught her. As a first-generation Latina, she had to determine cash on her personal, so she constructed The First Gen Mentor to ensure others wouldn’t need to. Her e-book, “Cultura and Cash,” turned a bestseller and earned an endorsement from Eva Longoria. Fast Company named her a Top 25 Creator for good cause: she has turned monetary literacy into one thing heat, relatable, and at last accessible to the individuals who want it most.
Stephanie Nuesi – Founder and CEO, Max Up
Stephanie Nuesi moved to the United States at 16, talking no English. Today, she’s a monetary analyst at Google and the founding father of Max Up, a profession teaching firm she began as an undergrad that has since helped 1000’s of scholars and professionals land jobs at corporations like Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Her story reminds us that the largest obstacles can turn into the largest causes to construct one thing for the individuals developing behind you.
Manny Ruiz – Co-Founder, Brilla Media; Founder, Hispanicize
Manny Ruiz has spent greater than 20 years constructing platforms that didn’t exist earlier than he constructed them. He based Hispanicize, the occasion that turned a cornerstone gathering for Latino trendsetters in media, advertising and marketing, and leisure, and later co-founded Brilla Media to maintain telling genuine Latino tales on an even bigger stage. From press wires to branded leisure, Manny has constructed a profession on ensuring Latino voices get the platforms they deserve.
Sandra Velasquez – Founder and CEO, Nopalera
Before Sandra Velasquez constructed a magnificence model, she was the lead singer of Pistolera, a Latin different band that toured internationally and had music featured on “Breaking Bad.” In 2020, with no exterior funding and a younger daughter at residence, she launched Nopalera from her Brooklyn residence, a shower and physique model impressed by the nopal cactus and rooted in Mexican tradition. She later turned down two gives on Shark Tank as a result of she knew her model’s value, then raised $2.7 million on her personal phrases. Nopalera now sits on cabinets at Nordstrom and Credo, proof that betting on your self can repay.
Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner – Chief Commercial Officer, GameChanger (a DICK’S Sporting Goods firm)
Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner has spent her profession turning advertising and marketing into an actual progress engine, not only a nice-to-have. She helped launch Walmart+, Walmart’s first membership program, and later turned Chief Marketing Officer at MoneyLion earlier than getting into her latest position main industrial technique at GameChanger, the app thousands and thousands of households use to comply with youth sports activities. She began her profession at Nestlé Mexico and holds an MBA from Harvard. Beyond the boardroom, she co-hosts the podcast “A LA LATINA,” the place she interviews Latina trailblazers about constructing genuine, profitable careers.
Juliana Garaizar – General Partner, Portfolia Rising America Fund; Founding Partner, Energy Tech Nexus
Juliana Garaizar has spent her profession opening doorways in an trade that not often opens them for individuals who seem like her. Originally from Spain, she began in Singapore earlier than finally touchdown in enterprise capital, the place she now backs BIPOC and LGBTQ+ founders by Portfolia’s Rising America Fund. She’s a Kauffman Fellow, a title reserved for a small, extremely selective group of enterprise leaders worldwide, and has spent years bridging the gender hole in an funding world that badly wants extra voices like hers.
Gretel Perera – Communications Leader in Tech
Gretel Perera has spent greater than 20 years ensuring Latinas in tech aren’t simply current, however seen. Born in Venezuela to a diplomat father, she grew up transferring between international locations, an expertise that formed her love for working throughout cultures and markets. In 2016, she co-founded Latinas in Tech alongside Rocío Medina, a group that has since grown into one of many largest networks of its variety, connecting 1000’s of Latina professionals throughout the trade. Her personal profession has taken her by communications management roles at Dell, Evernote, and Roku, proof that constructing group and constructing a profession don’t need to be separate issues.
Nahila Campos Pierson – Founder and CEO, Onda Agency
Nahila Campos Pierson spent over 15 years shaping digital advertising and marketing technique for international manufacturers earlier than launching Onda Agency in 2025, a boutique consultancy constructed to shut the hole between an organization’s actual substance and the way it reveals up on-line. She beforehand led digital advertising and marketing at Newlink for over a decade, working with manufacturers like Mastercard, MTV Latin America, and WeWork Latin America. She’s additionally a strategic advisor to Perpetuo Capital, centered on the schooling sector, and a member of L500, a community of Latina executives working to get extra 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 missed industries maintain outsized alternative. She served as Director of Technology and Business Innovation for the Government of El Salvador, serving to lead the nation’s rollout of Bitcoin as authorized tender, earlier than pivoting into residence providers expertise. 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 cleansing firm that’s grown to over 50 staff. Recognized by Forbes Centroamérica as one of many area’s strongest girls and by Bloomberg as one of the influential individuals in Latin American enterprise, she’s additionally a Ph.D. candidate learning communication and media on the University of Seville.
Claudia Medina – Regional Partner Sales & Business Manager, Google Cloud
Claudia Medina has spent over 20 years driving cloud adoption throughout Latin America, and right now she leads Google Cloud’s associate ecosystem technique throughout Central America and the Caribbean. Under her management, partner-driven gross sales have grown 100% 12 months over 12 months, constructed on relationships with managed service suppliers and resellers navigating AI, safety, and trendy collaboration instruments. A Venezuelan-born U.S. citizen and Stanford LEAD graduate, she additionally serves on the host committee for the Latina Leadership Summit, serving to construct the sort of group she didn’t at all times have entry to earlier in her personal profession.
Laura Moreno Lucas – General Partner, L’ATTITUDE Ventures
Laura Moreno Lucas immigrated to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Mexico, at simply seven years previous, and he or she has spent her profession ensuring different Latino entrepreneurs get the capital and help she as soon as needed to combat for. Before enterprise capital, she was a Managing Director at Nasdaq, the place she helped lead the IPOs of corporations like Airbnb, Lyft, and Beyond Meat. She additionally based Ladada, one of many first style subscription startups to highlight rising designers. Today, at L’ATTITUDE Ventures, a $100 million fund constructed particularly for Latino-led companies, she just lately printed “Latinas in VC,” a information spotlighting 31 girls breaking into an trade that has lengthy missed them.
Anna Dapelo-Garcia – DEI Senior Manager, Stanford Health Care
Anna Dapelo-Garcia didn’t take a conventional path to management. She grew up in a working-class San Jose neighborhood with no college-going position fashions, and labored her means up from a clerk place to administrative director at Stanford Health Care, incomes her levels alongside the best way. She based Lean In Latinas, a chapter of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In motion constructed particularly to raise Latina management, 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, ensuring the subsequent technology doesn’t need 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 construct one thing that didn’t exist earlier than him: the primary organized platform for Puerto Rican and Latino founders within the U.S. diaspora. Through Coquí Ventures, he backs underrepresented entrepreneurs and pushes for sincere, sensible conversations about what it really takes to boost capital as a founder who doesn’t match the standard investor’s mildew. His work bridges navy self-discipline with startup hustle, and it reveals in how methodically he’s constructing entry the place little or no existed earlier than.
Andrés Ospina – Founder and Principal Consultant, CreateValue™
Andrés Ospina has spent 15 years serving to entrepreneurs transfer from thought to traction, working throughout the U.S., Latin America, Spain, and the UK with organizations like TechTown Detroit and Ann Arbor SPARK. Through CreateValue™, he constructed LeanWorth™, a framework centered on connecting, experimenting, and making use of concepts in the actual world. He additionally 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 group to one of many world’s largest levels.
Luza Jaramillo – Director of Security GRC, Electronic Arts; Global Communications Lead, SOMOS EA
Luza Jaramillo helps hold EA’s programs safe by day, and by volunteer effort, she helps hold her Hispanic and Latinx colleagues linked. She leads international communications for SOMOS EA, the worker useful resource group that has grown into an actual pressure for illustration throughout EA’s video games and tradition since its founding in 2016. It’s a reminder that management doesn’t at all times include a title change. Sometimes it’s the additional hours somebody offers, alongside their day job, to ensure the individuals developing behind them really feel much less alone.
Flavio Morales – Media Executive; Executive Producer, JK Media Group
Flavio Morales began making tv at 17, co-creating a public entry present in East LA that gave native bands and artists a platform earlier than anybody paid him to do it. That intuition by no means left him. He went on to assist lead Telemundo’s mun2 community previous three many years of Galavision dominance, received a Peabody Award for a documentary on Latino navy service, and right now serves as an govt producer on HBO Max’s “Like Water for Chocolate” alongside Salma Hayek. Nearly thirty years in, he’s nonetheless telling bicultural tales that didn’t have a house earlier than he constructed one.
Rocío Hernández J. – Board Advisor, Global Chief Revenue Growth, BLAUTECH; Founder, HRQ Consulting
Rocio Hernandez J. spent over 25 years in management roles at IBM, Dell, HP, NTT DATA, and Atos earlier than founding HRQ Consulting to assist organizations handle the human aspect of technological danger, overlaying cybersecurity governance, AI readiness, and workforce transformation. She now additionally advises BLAUTECH’s board on international progress technique. Throughout her profession, she’s constructed associate ecosystems spanning Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and NVIDIA, and he or she carries that very same perception into her group work: management isn’t nearly having a seat on the desk; it’s about utilizing it to create room for another person.
Sabrina Ramos – Founder and Creative Director, Pop Spark Agency
Sabrina Ramos has spent over 20 years in occasion manufacturing, gross sales, and advertising and marketing technique, and he or she’s constructed Pop Spark Agency round a easy perception: actual connection occurs in particular person. Her company designs pop-up occasions and experiential advertising and marketing campaigns for startups and rising manufacturers throughout industries as assorted as hashish, SaaS, and meals and beverage. She’s at present constructing an occasion sequence at Gotham FC video games designed to attach girls in enterprise with girls in sports activities, channeling 20 years of watching individuals meet collaborators, enterprise companions, and even life companions on the occasions she produces.
Judy Roldan-Musson – Founder, Terra Marketing Platforms
Judy Roldan-Musson moved to Nicaragua along with her mom at only one 12 months previous, then returned to South Gate, California, the place she needed to relearn a language and a tradition from scratch. That early expertise of navigating two worlds turned the inspiration of her profession: over 25 years in multicultural advertising and marketing, connecting manufacturers 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 almost a decade. She calls herself a “Sweet Spot Latina,” somebody who understands tradition not as an out of doors observer, however as somebody who lives it on daily basis.
Claudia Romo Edelman – Founder and Executive Chair, We Are All Human and Hispanic Star
Claudia Romo Edelman spent over 20 years working inside establishments just like the United Nations and UNICEF earlier than she determined the Hispanic group wanted one thing constructed only for it. She based We Are All Human and its Hispanic Star initiative to convene Latino leaders throughout sectors and alter how the world sees Hispanic contributions, from the boardroom to kids’s bookshelves, the place she now writes a biography sequence introducing younger readers to Latino icons. Named certainly one of TIME’s 17 Top Latino Leaders of 2024, she’s proof that many years of quiet institutional work can flip right into a motion.
Mónica Ramírez – Founder and President, Justice for Migrant Women
Mónica Ramírez grew up in a household of migrant farmworkers in Fremont, Ohio, and began writing about her group’s struggles for an area newspaper at simply 14 years previous. That early intuition to inform the reality turned a lifelong mission. She based Justice for Migrant Women to combat office sexual violence and advocate for migrant girls’s rights, and her open letter “Dear Sisters,” written on behalf of farmworker girls, helped spark the nationwide TIME’S UP motion. She’s been named to TIME’s 100 Next checklist, however her work has at all times began with the individuals whose tales not often make headlines.
Omar Duque – President, HITEC (Hispanic Technology Executive Council)
Omar Duque has spent his profession constructing bridges between Latino expertise and the expertise trade’s largest alternatives. Before main HITEC, he ran the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the place he helped launch an incubator that graduated dozens of Latinx tech founders and helped them elevate thousands and thousands in early-stage capital. Today, he leads the group recognizing the highest Hispanic expertise executives throughout the Americas, proving that illustration on the prime begins with intentionally constructing the pipeline beneath it.
Alvaro Silberstein – Co-founder and CEO, Wheel the World
Alvaro Silberstein was paralyzed in a automotive accident as a young person, and for years, journey felt like one thing occurring to different individuals. Then in 2016, he turned the primary wheelchair person to finish Patagonia’s rugged W trek, a feat that modified how he noticed what was attainable. That journey turned the spark for Wheel the World, a platform that has since helped 1000’s of vacationers with disabilities discover greater than 150 locations worldwide with actual, detailed accessibility data they’ll belief. Alvaro turned his personal hardest second into a present for thousands and thousands of people that simply wished to see the world too.
Raúl Leal – CEO, SH Hotels & Resorts (Starwood Capital Group)
Raúl Leal has spent 35 years shaping what luxurious and way of life hospitality seems like, and he’s performed it whereas opening doorways for different Latino leaders in an trade that hasn’t at all times made house. Before getting into his present position overseeing the 1 Hotels, Baccarat, and Treehouse manufacturers, he spent a decade as President and CEO of Virgin Hotels, personally recruited by Richard Branson to launch the model from scratch. He constructed 5 accommodations underneath that partnership and left behind a tradition constructed on range and sustainability, proof that legacy and inclusion can develop aspect by aspect.
Isaac Mizrahi – CEO, Alma
Isaac Mizrahi spent the primary half of his profession on the shopper aspect, working with giants like Coca-Cola and Sprint, earlier than crossing over to the company world and finally changing into CEO of Alma, one of the revered multicultural promoting businesses within the nation. Under his management, Alma has stored successful main accounts and posting double-digit progress even in years when the trade pulled again from multicultural funding. He additionally writes an everyday column for Forbes on multicultural advertising and marketing, ensuring the enterprise case for reaching Hispanic audiences by no means goes quiet.
Ana Valdez – President and CEO, Latino Donor Collaborative
Ana Valdez moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles within the Nineteen Nineties and has spent many years since ensuring the world understands who Latinos in America really are, not who individuals assume they’re. As head of the Latino Donor Collaborative, she has led groundbreaking analysis into the financial energy of the U.S. Latino group, work so influential it landed her on Forbes’ “50 Over 50” checklist. Her mission is straightforward and cussed: substitute assumptions with details, 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 constructed his means as much as main its complete multicultural division, now overseeing roughly a billion {dollars} in annual billings for manufacturers like Target, Unilever, and Universal Pictures. He’s been acknowledged with the Executive Leadership Award in Hispanic Television for good cause: he’s spent over 20 years ensuring Hispanic audiences aren’t an afterthought in how manufacturers plan their largest campaigns.
Oswald Méndez – Marketing Executive; Founder, Collective Transformation
Oswald Méndez has spent his profession discovering the intersection the place tradition, commerce, and media really join. As Chief Marketing Officer of Canela Media, he helped drive the corporate’s progress by its first Series A funding spherical, and earlier than that, he constructed his personal consultancy, Collective Transformation, to assist media corporations navigate a quickly diversifying America. He’s held management roles at BBC America and helped launch complete networks like MundoFox, at all times circling again to 1 query: how do you make audiences really feel actually seen?
Nina Vaca – Chairman and CEO, Pinnacle Group
Nina Vaca began Pinnacle Group in 1996 as a one-woman IT staffing operation and constructed it into the biggest Latina-owned workforce options firm in America. Born in Ecuador to immigrant dad and mom who ran a household journey company, she watched expertise remodel their small enterprise firsthand, and that early lesson by no means left her. Today she sits on the boards of Fortune 1000 corporations like Kohl’s and Comerica, one of many few Latinas within the nation serving in that capability, and he or 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 constructed her first firm, Mobvious, into the biggest Hispanic-focused advert community within the nation earlier than it was acquired. Rather than cease there, she began over and launched Canela Media, residence to Canela.TV, the primary free streaming service constructed solely for Latino audiences by Latinos. She’s one of many few Latinas to efficiently elevate enterprise capital in a area the place lower than two p.c of funding goes to women-led companies, and underneath her management, Canela Media now reaches tens of thousands and thousands of individuals each month.
Andrés Palencia – CEO, LatiNation Media
Andrés Palencia leads LatiNation Media, the corporate behind LATV, one of many first bilingual, Latino-owned media manufacturers within the nation. Under his management, the corporate has constructed greater than 100 model partnerships and grown its digital footprint to succeed in Gen Z and Millennial Latino audiences throu