Friday
In It to Win It…Running for Elected Office
Hilda Zacarias
Hilda Zacarias successfully ran for a seat on the Santa Maria City Council in 2006. She is the third woman to be elected to the Council in the city’s 100 year history. Hilda grew up in Santa Maria and graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, with an emphasis in accounting. She completed her Masters Degree in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hilda owned her own accounting and tax firm in Santa Maria for 12 years, as well as working as an auditor of non-profits for a Santa Barbara based CPA firm. She taught taxation and accounting at Cal Poly.
Michael Rodriguez
Michael Rodriguez is the Director of Field Operations for the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. As such, Michael coordinates the Campaign Management Training program which provides future candidates and their campaign managers with the tools necessary for a successful campaign. He also was the campaign manager for a candidate in Illinois who ran against a tough incumbent in a race for State representative.
Cesar Martinez
Cesar Martinez has 20 years in political and traditional marketing. He has been creative director of various advertising agencies and director of dozens of spots that have been played throughout the continent. Cesar was a member of the creative team and director of the publicity spots for President George W. Bush’s 2002 Hispanic campaign and was a member of the strategic communication team for the Hispanic electorate of the campaign Bush-Cheney 2004. He also worked on the reelection campaign for governors Jeb Bush in Florida and Rick Perry in Texas.
Richard Ybarra (Moderator)
Richard Ybarra is Senior Partner with Ybarra Company, the premiere Latino public affairs consulting firm in California. Numerous organizations have utilized his advice and guidance on public policy, elections, organizational and leadership development, and grassroots strategies. He has worked with foundations, nonprofit and grassroots organizations, businesses and candidates across the country focusing on leadership, civic engagement, outreach, and local and state government issues. More recently his efforts have been focused on economic development, housing, leadership coaching and issue campaigns. Mr. Ybarra is a graduate of the Kennedy School’s MPA program.
The Harvard Hangover: Post KSG Strategies Workshop
Roberto Carmona
Roberto has over 15 years of experience in management, human resources, strategic planning and leadership development in the federal government, the private sector and the non-profit sector. Roberto is currently an Executive Search and Management Consultant, where he provides business development, client management, and coaching for Public Sector, Higher Education, Nonprofit, and Fortune 500 clients and candidates.
In 2002-2003 Roberto was awarded the National Council of La Raza’s Mid Career Fellowship to attend Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
After completing a Masters Degree in Public Administration, he returned to Washington, D.C. as Director of Programs for the New America Alliance (NAA). In 2004, Roberto returned to Chicago and served as an environmental justice consultant for the Federal Aviation Administration. He has been a consultant to the American Hospital Association's American Colleges of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Institute for Diversity, National Forum of Latino Hospital Executives (NFLHE) and the Hispanic Institute.
From 1997-2002, Mr. Carmona oversaw programs for the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Roberto was awarded the Community Builder Fellowship by HUD and Harvard's KSG Executive Programs. He helped establish HUD's Office of Rural Housing and Economic Development and represented USDOL for the multi-Federal agency $1.7 Billion Round II Empowerment Zone Competition. In 2000, Roberto was appointed by USDOL as the National Monitor Advocate, where he oversaw federally funded employment services programs targeted to Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers (MSFWs) and assisted farm worker organizations in creating the National Farm Worker Alliance (NFA).
From 1994-1997 Roberto served as Midwest Regional Director for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).
From 1990-1994 Roberto was an academic advisor and recruiter for the LARES (Latin American and Educational Services) program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and prior to his work at UIC, Roberto served as an adult basic education instructor for Latino Youth Alternative High School and the City Colleges of Chicago.
Joseph A. Garcia
In August of 2006, Joseph A. Garcia became the 13th president of Colorado State University - Pueblo. Mr. Garcia earned an undergraduate degree in business from the University of Colorado (1979) and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School (1983). He also has studied at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at Oxford University.
Garcia's diverse professional background includes extensive legal, governmental, and management experience. He has served on the Governor’s Cabinet as Executive Director of one of Colorado’s executive branch agencies and has served in the federal government as the regional director of one of the chief federal agencies, representing the White House and a cabinet secretary in the six Rocky Mountain States. Garcia has taught as an adjunct professor and has lectured in classrooms at CU-Colorado Springs and CU-Denver. From 2001-2006, he was president of Pikes Peak Community College.
Garcia has twice been selected as Hispanic Business Magazine's "Hispanic Legal
Elite" and as "President of the Year" by the Colorado Community Colleges State
Student Advisory Council. Colorado Springs NAACP also named him "Outstanding
Administrator in Higher Education" in 2004.
Throughout his career, he has been an active community volunteer and board
member for numerous non-profit organizations. He joined the board of directors
of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority from 1994-1999 under then Gov. Roy
Romer. Gov. Bill Owens appointed him again in 2001. He currently serves as
chairman. Recently, he was invited by the Colorado Commission on Higher
Education to join the presidents of Metropolitan State College of Denver and
the Community College of Denver to represent Colorado at the National Leadership
Summit on Advancing College Readiness in Washington, D.C. last month.
Garcia is married to Dr. Claire Garcia, professor of English at Colorado College. They have four children.
Friday Dinner Keynote
R. Alexander Acosta was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida on June 9, 2006. The Southern District extends along more than 300 miles of coastline from Key West in the South to Vero Beach in the North and has approximately six million people.
Prior to his appointment as United States Attorney, Mr. Acosta was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Acosta was the first Hispanic to serve as an Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights statutes, including those statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, handicap, religion, and national origin in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs. Prior to his service as Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Acosta was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve as a member of the National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB").
A native of Miami, Florida, Mr. Acosta attended the Gulliver Schools in Miami. He earned his degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After graduation, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then worked at the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Kirkland and Ellis. Mr. Acosta has also taught several classes on employment law, disability‑based discrimination law, and civil rights law at the George Mason School of Law.
Saturday Panelists
Strategic Interventions for Latino Access to Housing, Health Insurance, and Wealth
Louis Barajas-Louis Barajas is a premier example of the American dream. Born in the barrio of East Los Angeles and the son of Mexican immigrants, Louis began his financial and small business career in his teens by helping his father and mother with their wrought iron business. He graduated from UCLA in 1984, received his MBA from Claremont Graduate School in 1987, and attained a Certified Financial Planner designation from the Denver College of Financial Planning in 1990. After some personal life changing events and years’ of experience at major accounting and financial planning firms in Southern California, Louis left the “yacht and Mercedes” crowd and returned to East Los Angeles in 1991 to form his own wealth and business planning firm. Louis wished to make a difference with the kind of people he grew up with - hard-working men and women who, because of a lack of information or understanding, often made bad financial choices that kept them from achieving the success, security, and significance they deserved.
Since 1991, Louis has become a nationally recognized expert in financial and business issues. Louis believes that creating abundance in underserved communities will happen only when people change their limiting and culturally conditioned beliefs about money. His goal is simple: to create an Economic Revolution for the Working Class, to help them attain greater abundance through more wise financial and business choices. In his books, speeches, seminars, personal and business coaching, Louis makes the complex and overwhelming world of finances and small business comprehensible, as he teaches people at every economic level the simple, practical, and powerful financial and business strategies to achieve Financial Greatness™.
Louis is a highly sought after keynote speaker for local, regional, and national conferences. He has been profiled, appeared as a guest, or quoted over in 1,000 local and national television, radio, and press, such as, CBS Sunday Morning Show, CNBC, Univision News, CNN en Español, ABC NEWS, Despierta America, El Show de Rocio, National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic, The Journal of Financial Planning, Financial Planning Magazine, and Hispanic Business.
His firm, Louis Barajas, Wealth & Business Planning, helps individuals and business owners attain their financial goals through the proper implementation of wise financial and business strategies. Louis also conducts financial and business seminars and workshops throughout the country to help people create wealth and enjoy a more balanced life. His knowledge product company, Financial Greatness, Inc., creates books, seminars, workshops and other media products to inspire financial abundance for individuals and organizations.
Louis is clearly recognized as one of the national leading experts and advocates for financial literacy and small business for the working class. His purpose in life is to be the catalyst in helping people of all income levels attain their greatest life goals.
Sylvia Trujillo is a Senior Legislative Counsel with the American Medical Association (AMA). Sylvia provides legislative and regulatory analysis on an array of issues including: genetics/bioethics, stem cell research, telemedicine, Medicare managed care and the prescription drug benefit, drug importation/reimportation, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drugs, biologics and devices safety issues. Sylvia has over 10 years of public agency and healthcare law experience.
Prior to the AMA, she served as a litigation attorney in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Office of the General, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Division. She also served as an Assistant Regional Counsel for HHS where she represented a number of HHS agencies in addition to CMS. Sylvia provided legal representation to HHS on varied issues including Medicaid coverage, matching funds and state plan amendments, Medicare reimbursement, nursing home and home health agency quality of care enforcement matters, compliance with the Administrative Procedures Act, and health care fraud and abuse in the context of bankruptcy.
She earned her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), her Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and her undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College, cum laude.
Eva M. Plaza
Eva M. Plaza is the Chief Deputy City Solicitor for the Solicitor’s office of the City of Philadelphia. Ms. Plaza is in charge of the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative Unit. Prior to this position, Ms. Plaza served as Assistant Secretary of Fair Housing & Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ms. Plaza was appointed to a four-year term by President Bill Clinton and was sworn in on November 8, 1997. As Assistant Secretary, Ms. Plaza vigorously enforced the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and its amendments, and waged aggressive education and outreach campaigns in communities across the country.
Prior to her appointment as Assistant Secretary, Ms. Plaza served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General over the Torts Branch at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before serving in the Administration, Ms. Plaza was litigation trial attorney in the Washington, D.C. law firms of Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson and Arent, Fox, Kinter, Plotkin & Kahn from 1986 to 1993.
Ms. Plaza has received numerous awards for outstanding achievement, including the Albert Arent Pro Bono Award, 1989; the National Conference for College Women Leaders, Woman of Distinction Award in 1998; and the Hispanic Bar Association’s Equal Justice Award in 2002. She has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in America, and is a lifetime member of the American Bar Association’s American Bar Foundation.
Ms. Plaza graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1980. Ms. Plaza studied law at the University of California Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, where she served as Associate Editor of the California Law Review. After graduating from law school in 1984, Ms. Plaza was selected to the highly acclaimed Attorney General Honors Program of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. where she was trial counsel in the Civil Division’s Commercial Litigation Branch.
Ruben Jose King-Shaw, Jr.
Ruben Jose King-Shaw Jr. is Chairman and CEO of Mansa Equity Partners, Inc., a
health care private equity investment and advisory firm. The firm focuses on
health care products, services and technologies that can benefit from the trends
in clinical science, demographics, government payment policy and regulation. A
dual citizen of Panama and The United States, Ruben has advised governments and
companies in North America, The Caribbean, South Africa and Latin America on
matters of business development, mergers and acquisitions, and health care
policy.
Ruben also remains active in public service. New York Governor George Pataki appointed Ruben to the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney appointed Ruben to the University Of Massachusetts Board Of Trustees. He chairs the UMass Board’s Committee on Academic and Student Affairs. Ruben is a member of the Cornell University Council and the Advisory Council at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Abbott Laboratories named Ruben to their Health Policy Board in 2005. Ruben is also a director of the Scripps Florida Funding Corporation.
Ruben has an extensive expertise in health policy, economics and finance. Ruben served in the George W. Bush Administration from 2001 to 2003 as Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Ruben was also Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. Before entering public service, Ruben had twenty years of experience in health care management.
Ruben is happily married to Patricia Gipson King-Shaw and they have two beautiful daughters, Alexandra Anis, and Angelica Anastasia. They enjoy their homes in Massachusetts, Florida and Panama City, Panama.
Beyond Chávez: Is There a Left in Latin America?
John C. Bonifaz
John Bonifaz is the founder of the National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI) and a Senior Legal Fellow at Demos in its Democracy Program. Founded in 1994, NVRI has served as a prominent legal and public education center dedicated to protecting the right of all citizens to vote and to participate in the electoral process on an equal and meaningful basis. Mr. Bonifaz served as NVRI’s executive director from 1994-2004, and then as its general counsel from 2004-2006. From January through September 2006, Mr. Bonifaz took a leave from the National Voting Rights Institute to run as a Democratic candidate for Massachusetts Secretary of State, garnering nearly 130,000 votes in a primary fight against a 12-year incumbent. In the spring of 2007, Mr. Bonifaz will be an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, teaching a course on advocating for democracy in the United States.
Mr. Bonifaz also maintains a private law practice with his father, Cristobal Bonifaz, specializing in international human rights and environmental cases. Since 1993, Mr. Bonifaz and his father have been involved in a longstanding battle to hold the Texaco oil company accountable for its environmental destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon. In February and March 2003, Mr. Bonifaz served as plaintiffs’ lead counsel in John Doe I v. President Bush, a constitutional challenge to President Bush’s authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action.
Mr. Bonifaz is the author of: Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush (NationBooks-NY, foreword by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., January 2004), on the illegality of the Iraq war. Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
José Santana
José Santana is the Executive Director of the Dominican Republic Presidential Commission of Science and Technology and Research Associate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Santana was born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and is an economic specialist in technology and development.
Santana completed his Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) with a degree in economics. In 1997 he received a certification at the University of Ilmenau (Erfurt, Germany) for his active participation in the ISWI program Building Our Future. In 2001 he completed a graduate program at Columbia University in New York on Executive Information Technology Management.
José Santana joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the end of 2003. He became a research affiliate of the MIT Auto-ID Laboratory where he specialized in Radio Frequency Identification - RFID and Supply Chain Management.
In September of 2004, he was appointed by the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, to take on the role of Executive Director of the International Commission of Science and Technology with the rank of Ambassador and Special Advisor to the President. José Santana is an activist and visionary in the development of science and technology in developing countries.
In 2005 he joined the One Laptop Per Child initiative. The aim of the this initiative is to provide low cost laptops to every child in developing countries. In early 2006, Santana established in the state of New Jersey the International Foundation of Science & Technology to promote knowledge transfer to developing countries.
Ana Maria Salazar (Moderator)
Ana Maria Salazar Slack, is a recognized international law and national security expert on Latin America. She writes a weekly column for El Universal, El Informador, El Imparcial and other major Mexican newspapers and “La Opinión” in California. She anchors two popular English speaking nation-wide radios news programs in Mexico, in addition to hosting a weekly TV show “Seguridad Total” on Channel 40 (SKY 140). She is the author of two books: “La Guerras que Vienen ” (Aguilar/Nuevo Siglo 2003) and the bestseller “Seguridad Nacional Hoy. El Reto de las Democracias” (Aguilar/Nuevo Siglo 2002). In addition to her work in the media, Ms. Salazar heads Grupo Salazar, an international consulting firm that specializes on negotiation and mediation training (www.gruposalazar.com).
Between June 1998 and January 2001, Ms. Salazar served at the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement Policy and Support. As a result of her efforts at the Pentagon, in 2000 Ms. Salazar was recognized by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the 100 most influential Hispanic Americans in the United States. Prior to joining the Pentagon, Ms. Salazar served at the White House as Policy Advisor for President Clinton’s Special Envoy for the Americas in 1998 and from March 1995 to June 1997, she served in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Ms. Salazar has also worked and lived in Latin America. In Colombia she served as the Judicial Attaché at the United States Embassy in Bogotá, coordinating evidence and information requests between the United States and the relevant Colombian agencies. She also has supervised multi-million dollar projects designed to improve the administration of justice in Colombia and Guatemala.
Ms. Salazar received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1989 and a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. She is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts and in the District of Columbia and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Raquel Aldana
Professor Aldana earned her J.D. degree in 1997 from Harvard Law School, where she served as articles editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Prior to coming to the Boyd School of Law, Professor Aldana worked for the Center for Justice and International Law representing victims of gross human rights violations in the Inter-American System on Human Rights. She also taught a seminar in human rights at the University of Baltimore, School of Law. Prior to that, she was an associate at the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C.
Professor Aldana teaches Immigration Law, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, International Human Rights, and International Public Law. She also teaches experiential learning courses, including a course in Nicaragua on domestic violence in a post-conflict society. She spent the Spring of 2006 as a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala, where she taught courses on economic rights and conducted research on femicide. Her publications have appeared in The Journal of Human Rights, the UC Davis Law Review, Human Rights Quarterly, the Oregon Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.
Antonio Gonzalez
Antonio Gonzalez is President of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP). SVREP, founded in 1974, is the largest and oldest non-partisan Latino voter participation organization in the U.S. Gonzalez assumed the presidency of SVREP in 1994, after having served from 1984-90 as an SVREP organizer, and from 1991-94 as a policy program director with the William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI), SVREP's sister organization. Gonzalez and SVREP have been central figures in the dramatic growth of Latino political participation across the nation. Gonzalez was the central architect of the Latino Vote USA, Latino Vote 2000, Campaign for Communities (2004), and the Ten-Four campaigns in 1996, 2000, and 2004 that mobilized record numbers of new Latino voters across the U.S.
Gonzalez put WCVI on the map as the first national Latino organization to include U.S.-Latin America relations in the U.S. Latino Agenda. Key Gonzalez initiatives included: sending delegations to observe the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran elections in 1990 and 1991, leading the Latino Consensus on the NAFTA movement that led to the creation of the $3 Billion North American Development Bank in 1993, promoting greater dialogue between the U.S. and Cuba, and critiquing the War on Drugs. In 2006, Gonzalez presided over an historic gathering of Latino organizations, activists and elected officials, the Latino Congreso, which drew more than 2,000 participants, and helped to shape a long-term political agenda for the Latino community.
Gonzalez has lectured and written on U.S. Latino voting behavior, as well as Latino participation in U.S.-Latino America policy. He currently appears as a regular commentator on the Public Radio International's Tavis Smiley Show and hosts his own weekly radio show on Pacifica’s KPFK in Los Angeles called “Strategy Session”. Most recently, Time Magazine named Gonzalez in August 2005 one of the 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.
Gonzalez has traveled extensively in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean and is fluent in Spanish. A graduate in U. S. History of the University of Texas, San Antonio in 1981, he also conducted undergraduate coursework at UC San Diego during 1975-77 and Masters Course work in Latin American History at U.C. Berkeley in 1981-82.
Lunch Keynote
Hon. Carolyn Curiel
Carolyn Curiel has been a United States Ambassador, Senior Speechwriter and Special Assistant to the President, and she now serves on the Editorial Board of The New York Times. She became perhaps the only speechwriter ever credited for writing a major presidential address when President Bill Clinton acknowledged her as the author of the policy speech that included the still-quoted words: “mend it, don’t end it,” in reference to affirmative action.
As ambassador, Ms. Curiel advanced American interests on a wide range of bilateral and regional issues, including regional security, environment, border disputes and trade and economic cooperation. She negotiated, signed and delivered long-stalled treaties on extradition, legal collaboration and increased counter-narcotics cooperation. An admitted bookworm and policy wonk, she nonetheless donned Army fatigues and accompanied U.S. and regional forces into the thickest jungle for military exercises — something her male predecessors missed doing.
At the White House, Ms. Curiel wrote on the President’s “opportunity agenda,” which included education, health,environment and race relations. For a change of pace, she also assisted with the President’s comedy monologues.
The Times hired Ms. Curiel in 2002 to write editorials on politics and social issues. Another New York paper, The Observer, noting her role as the director of The Times’ elections endorsements, called her “perhaps the most powerful person in New York politics.”
Ms. Curiel has also been an Emmy-nominated producer and writer for Ted Koppel at ABC News Nightline, manager of the Caribbean Division for United Press International, and an editor at The Washington Post and at The New York Times.
She has received numerous honors for her work as a communicator, trailblazer and mentor. She received a B.A. in Radio-TV-Film at Purdue University, which has honored her as a Distinguished Alumna. Calumet College of St. Joseph in Indiana awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1998.
The Intersection of Organizing, Politics & Direct Action
Maria Teresa Peterson
Named by Hispanic Magazine as among the top Latinas in Government and Politics, Maria Teresa Petersen is the founding Executive Director of Voto Latino, a youth organization founded by actress Rosario Dawson seeking to galvanize the fastest growing eligible voting block in America. Under Maria Teresa's leadership, Voto Latino launched the first national mobile texting campaign to register voters. Prior to Voto Latino, Maria Teresa served as a political consultant to several clients including: Bayer Pharmaceuticals, National Latino Council of Alcohol and Tobacco Prevention, and AT&T. She started her career as a Legislative Aide for former Democratic Caucus Chairman Vic Fazio. Maria Teresa has appeared in several media outlets including CNBC, NY1, and Unvision; and she serves as a frequent guest speaker at national conferences focusing on social entrepreneurship and Latino issues. Maria Teresa is a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy International Affairs Fellow, a National Hispana Leadership Institute Fellow, and a founding board member of the Latino Leader's Network. Maria Teresa holds a Master's from Harvard and a Bachlelor's from UC Davis. The White House Project's SheSource.org recently invited Maria Teresa to participate as a political and social entrepreneur expert for their project.
Marshall Ganz (Moderator)
Lecturer in Public Policy, entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960. In 1964, a year before graduating, he left to volunteer as a civil rights organizer in Mississippi. In 1965, he joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers; over the next 16 years he gained experience in union, community, issue, and political organizing and became Director of Organizing. During the 1980s, he worked with grassroots groups to develop effective organizing programs, designing innovative voter mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns. In 1991, in order to deepen his intellectual understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard College and, after a 28-year leave of absence, completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He was awarded an MPA by the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000. He teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, organization, and strategy in social movements, civic associations, and politics.
Rocio Saenz
After immigrating to the U.S. from Mexico and working low wage jobs, Rocio Saenz became an organizer for Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles in 1988. Here she led a successful campaign to organize janitors in Los Angeles. The campaign builds worker power by eliminating non-union competition, and using community support and political power to turn janitors into a united force- capable to standing up to national janitorial contractors and building power to win respect, higher wages and safer workplaces. In August, 2001, Saenz moved to Boston to build the Justice for Janitors program. In the fall of 2002, Rocio led several thousand Boston janitors on a month long strike that ended with a historic settlement and support from media, clergy, politicians and community groups. Boston became her home, and in July 2003, Rocio was elected President of SEIU Local 615, the building service workers’ union.
Saru Jayaraman
Saru Jayaraman is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 1992 she founded Women and Youth Supporting Each Other (W.Y.S.E.), a national non-profit organization dedicated to providing young women of color with the resources, information and support necessary to think critically and take leadership in their communities for change. As Attorney/Organizer at the Workplace Project, a Latina/o immigrant worker organizing center, she created The Alliance for Justice, a law and organizing program that organized custodial, factory, and restaurant workers to fight for workplace justice. Most recently, together with workers from Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, she founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an immigrant workers' center focused on organizing immigrant restaurant workers all over New York City, particularly those displaced from the World Trade Center, and the families of restaurant worker victims of 9/11. Among other things, ROC-NY has organized workers to win workplace justice campaigns and launch their own cooperatively-owned restaurant. As a Professor of Political Science and Labor Law at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and New York University, Ms. Jayaraman has also just co-edited The New Urban Immigrant Workforce (ME Sharpe, 2005). Her constant fight is for racial and economic justice domestically and globally.
Latino Leadership in the Political Sphere
Adolfo Carrión, Jr.
Adolfo Carrión, Jr. is the Bronx’s 12th chief executive since municipal incorporation in 1898. Carrión graduated from Kings College, a Christian liberal arts college then located in Westchester County. He served as an associate pastor at a Bronx church and later as a public school teacher in the west Bronx. After earning a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, Carrión worked for three years in the Bronx office of the New York City Department of City Planning. Carrión then became the district manager for Community Board 5 in the Bronx, overseeing the delivery of services to over 150,000 residents. He later became Vice President of Human Services and Community Outreach for Promesa, a community development organization. In 1997, Carrión ran for and won a seat in the City Council representing the Bronx’s 14th District.
Since Carrión took office as Bronx Borough President in 2001, over 2.2 billion dollars has been invested in residential real estate – resulting in 25,000 new units built. He has directed 40% of his 2007 capital funding to housing development. In 2005, 1,222 new addresses were issued in the borough, a 97% increase since 2002.
The Bronx has seen a pace of development never before experienced in the history of the county. Carrión has ensured that this development does not occur in a vacuum and has always insisted that the community must be involved. By working with developers, the Borough President has created a set of standards for economic development in the Bronx. Simply put if you want to do business in the Bronx, you must do business with the Bronx. Residents, Bronx businesses, community groups and neighborhoods have benefited from the economic development taking place throughout the borough. Jobs, new and improved parkland, better infrastructure, contract opportunities for Bronx businesses and benefits for community organizations are all a part of his building a stronger Bronx policy.
Carrión, 45, is married to Linda Baldwin, an attorney. He has three daughters – Raquel, Sara and Olivia – and a son Adolfo James, known as AJ. He lives with his family on City Island in the Bronx.
Juan M. Garcia III
Representative Juan M. Garcia III (D-Corpus Christi) is a second-generation naval aviator and attorney. Representative Garcia graduated with honors from UCLA, where he gave the 1988 commencement address. He earned his law degree from Harvard and his master's degree in public policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1992. After completing his naval officer and flight training, Representative Garcia received his "Wings of Gold" at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. Lieutenant Commander Garcia flew 30 armed missions in the Persian Gulf, was the top aide to the deputy Commander in Chief of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, and served in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Constellation in support of the enforcement of the no-fly zone in Iraq. His military awards include the Joint Commendation Medal, the Naval Commendation Medal, and the Naval Achievement Medal.
In 1999, Representative Garcia was one of 16 Americans selected to serve as a White House Fellow, the nation's premier leadership development program whose alumni include Henry Cisneros and Colin Powell, and worked as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Representative Garcia left active duty in 2004 and continues to serve as an instructor pilot at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi with the Naval Reserves. He practices civil defense law with the firm of Hartline, Dacus, Barger, Dreyer & Kern. Representative Garcia and his wife Denise, who met while classmates at Harvard Law, have four children, including twin eight-year-old boys, a six-year old daughter, and a three-year old son. They live in Corpus Christi.
Andrew “Andy” Hernandez (Moderator)
Andrew “Andy” Hernandez is a Leadership Scholar in residence at the Center for Policy Studies at the University of Texas San Antonio. He is the co-author of the Almanac of Latino Politics 2002-2004 and more recently has been a contributing author for the Emerging Voices, Urgent Choices: Essays on Latino/a Religions Leadership and to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas.
Prior to his appointment to UTSA, Mr. Hernandez served as the founder and first Executive Director of the 21st Century Leadership Center at St. Mary's University, the first Director for The Base Vote Division at the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., and as The President of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. He also served as a pastor of the United Methodist Church in Floresville, Texas.
Nationally Mr. Hernandez has served as a leadership development and strategic planning consultant to a number of national organizations including the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago, IL, The National Community of Latino Leaders Inc., The National Conference of Hispanic Ministries, The National Latino’s Children’s Institute San Antonio, The Wellstone Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota and The Latino Academy in Los Angeles, CA.
He also has been quoted in Time, Buisinessweek, Newsweek, as well as just about every major newspaper in the country. He has appeared on the News Hour, CBS News, Univision, and the list goes on. He has lectured extensively at Harvard, Norte Dame, Southern Methodist University, University of Houston, University at Dayton, University of Southern California, Arizona State University, to name a few.
Mr. Hernandez has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including Hispanic Business Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Hispanics, National Council of La Raza’s Hero Award and the Willie C. Velasquez Lifetime Achievement Award. More recently Mr. Hernandez received The United States Hispanic Leadership Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jeffrey Sanchez
Born in the Washington Heights section of New York City, Jeffrey Sánchez moved with his family to the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston as a child. A graduate of the Boston Public Schools and UMASS/BOSTON, Jeffrey has worked in banking/financial services and in various capacities for the City of Boston, including the Mayor’s Community Liaison to the Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill neighborhoods as well as to the Hispanic community citywide. He served as the Director of Boston Census 2000. He also worked as Director of Planning at the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation and served as a consultant to the Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. Jeffrey has served as the State Representative for the 15th Suffolk/Norfolk district for five years, serving the communities of Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and Brookline. As the Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, Jeffrey’s legislative agenda is extensive and emphasizes initiatives that address access and retention in education and workforce development policies. Jeffrey has been recognized with an honorary doctorate from Wentworth Institute of Technology and was honored with the Boston Junior Chamber of Commerce Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Young Leaders award in May of 2005, followed by the national recognition of being named as one of the United States Junior Chamber Commerce Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Young Americans for 2005.
He lives in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood with his wife, Brenda, and daughter, Luna Isabella.