Gloria Estefan is a Cuban-American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman. A contralto, she started her career as the lead singer in the group Miami Latin Boys, which later became known as Miami Sound Machine. She experienced worldwide success with "Conga" in 1985; this became Estefan's signature song and led to the Miami Sound Machine winning the grand prix in the 15th annual Tokyo Music Festival in 1986. In the middle of 1988, she and the band got their first number-one hit with the song "Anything for You".
María Elena Salinas, is an American broadcast journalist, news anchor, and author. Called the "Voice of Hispanic America" by The New York Times, Salinas is one of the most recognized Hispanic female journalists in the United States. She was the co-anchor of Noticiero Univision, the primary evening news broadcast on Univision, and the co-host of the news magazine program Aquí y Ahora.
Hilda Lucia Solis is an American politician and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 1st district. Solis previously served as the 25th United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 to 2013, as part of the administration of President Barack Obama. She is a member of the Democratic Party and served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2009, representing the 31st and 32nd congressional districts of California that include East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley.
Lucille Elsa Roybal-Allard is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for California's 40th congressional district, serving in Congress since 1993. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 33rd from 1993 to 2003 and as the 34th from 2003 to 2013, includes much of southern Los Angeles, as well as a number of eastern suburbs such as Downey, Bell and Bell Gardens.
Nydia Margarita Velázquez Serrano is a politician serving in the United States House of Representatives since 1993. Velázquez, a Democrat from New York was the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus until January 3, 2011. Her district, located in New York City, was numbered the 12th district from 1993 to 2013 and has been numbered the 7th district since 2013. Velázquez is the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in the United States Congress.
Emilio Estefan Gómez is a Cuban American musician and producer. Estefan has won 19 Grammy Awards. He first came to prominence as a member of the Miami Sound Machine. He is the husband of singer Gloria Estefan, father of son Nayib Estefan and daughter Emily Estefan, and the uncle of Spanish-language television personality Lili Estefan.
Hispanic and Latino Americans are Americans of Spanish or Latin American ancestry. More generally, these demographics include all Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino. As of 2018, the Census Bureau estimated that there were almost 60 million Hispanics living in the United States.
María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien is an American broadcast journalist and executive producer. Since 2016, O'Brien has been the host for Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien, a nationally syndicated weekly talk show produced by Hearst Television. She is chairwoman of Starfish Media Group, a multiplatform media production company and distributor that she founded in 2013. She is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Carlos Miguel Gutierrez is an American former CEO and former United States Secretary of Commerce. He is currently a Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of EmPath, a Skills Intelligence Software as a Service machine learning company that uses proprietary software to enable large and complex organizations to discover and grow employee's skills by identifying their proficiencies and deficiencies and enabling their efficient redeployment, up-skilling, re-skilling, and training.
Leslie Sanchez is a Latina American author, political pundit affiliated with the Republican Party, and founder/CEO of Impacto Group LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based market research and consulting firm. She was ranked one of "Newsmax's 50 Most Influential Latino Republicans" in 2016.
Monica Cecilia Lozano is the president of the College Futures Foundation, based in San Francisco. Previously she was an American newspaper editor, the publisher and Chief Executive Officer of La Opinión and CEO of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. Based in Los Angeles, La Opinión is the largest Spanish publication in the United States. She was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was appointed by the California State Legislature to join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commission on the 21st Century Economy.
Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen is a Costa Rican diplomat with experience in high level national and international policy and multilateral negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15 in Copenhagen. During the next six years she worked to rebuild the global climate change negotiating process, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historical achievement.
Raul Marcelo Claure is a Bolivian-American technology entrepreneur and businessman. Currently the chief executive officer (CEO) of SoftBank Group International and chief operating officer (COO) of SoftBank Group Corporation, he oversees SoftBank's operations and strategy along with CEO Masayoshi Son. As COO of SoftBank Group, a holding company, Claure oversees portfolio companies such as Boston Dynamics, Arm Holdings, Sprint, Fortress, Brightstar, SB Energy, and WeWork. He also heads the SoftBank Latin America Fund and the Tech Hub. The executive chairman of Sprint Corporation, Claure previously served as Sprint's CEO from 2014 until 2018. Credited with having "led a turnaround" at Sprint, he continues to oversee the company's planned merger with T-Mobile USA.
Maria Cardona works at the Dewey Square Group and is the founder of Latinovations. Cardona is a Democratic strategist and CNN/CNN en Español political commentator. Starting in 2020 Maria spearheads ¡MARIA! with Maria Cardona talk show. She dissects advocacy and public policy that shape Latinos lives in the U.S. in El Rey Network.
John de Leon is a retired Cuban-American attorney known for his work on immigration and civil rights issues. His cases were the subject of reports in The New York Times and ABC News and he has been a frequent guest on Spanish-language news and opinion programs and local media discussing immigration and other human-rights topics. He also appeared as a legal commentator on CNN.
María Gabriela de Jesús Isler Morales is a Venezuelan TV host, fashion model and beauty queen who represented Venezuela and was crowned Miss Universe 2013, gaining placement as the seventh Miss Universe of her country.
Pilar Frank O'Leary is an international business consultant, former lawyer, corporate executive and not-for-profit director. She is Founder and President of PFO Advisory Group, which primarily advises institutions working with Latin America and Spain on policy and business development matters. Previously, O'Leary worked as a corporate lawyer and business executive at major companies including Goldman, Sachs & Co, JP Morgan and Fannie Mae. She also was Director of the Smithsonian Latino Center from 2005–2008, serving as senior advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the Smithsonian on relations with U.S. Latino and Latin American communities.
Michelle Bholat is an American physician. She is an associate professor of family medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she serves as vice-chair of clinical affairs and is a member of the Medical Board of California.
Debbie Jessika Mucarsel-Powell is an American politician and college administrator who served as a U.S. Representative for Florida's 26th congressional district from 2019 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, her district covered the western part of Miami-Dade County, including Homestead, as well as the Florida Keys. Mucarsel-Powell was the first Ecuadorian American and first South American-born immigrant to serve as a member of the U.S. House and the U.S. Congress.
Julie Chávez Rodriguez is an American political rights activist and the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She grew up in California in a well-known family of American labor and civil rights activists, the granddaughter of American labor leader, César Chávez and American labor activist Helen Fabela Chávez. From 2008 to 2016, Rodriguez served in the Obama administration, initially working for the United States Secretary of the Interior and later in the White House Office of Public Engagement.
