The end of the year is always a time of reflection and reckoning. A time to look back and also ahead to the new year. Most of us do this for ourselves personally, but I also like to take stock of how Hispanic Star is meeting the challenges of our times.
I often talk about how when I firstcame to the US, I looked at the data about the Latino community. It was all strong and positive – and today it continues to prove that we are the driving force of the US economy.
But I also saw the gap between reality and perception. And unfortunately, perceptions were damaging us — damaging our quest for growth and opportunity. Damaging to fair representation and compensation. Our contributions were unnoticed and unrewarded. And, even worse, we allowed perceptions to distort how we felt about ourselves.
These were the reasons I started We Are All Human and focus our efforts on Hispanic Star.
So for the past five years, we focused on three goals: unifying our community; educating, equipping and mobilizing Latinos and allies, and third, creating visibility platforms to advance our agenda.
As this year comes to an end, I feel that the momentum is now truly on our side. All the hard work we have all been putting in is at a tipping point:
- Our 7th Annual Hispanic Leadership Summit drew 650 Latino leaders from the public, private and non-profit sectors. This year, we wanted to expand our participation and asked people to apply. We received thousands of applications from people who want to be a part of a community of change makers for Latino unity and pride.
- Our Hispanic Promise Pledge, which we launched with HACR and dozens of Latino organizations, has been signed by 350 companies, many of whom continue to deepen their commitment and involvement.
- Six years ago we brought the Latino agenda to Davos for the first time by forming and training Latino delegations. The first year, when we did a briefing session to align on messaging 5 Latinos and 2 allies showed up (and one of the allies was my husband). Last year 150 joined the same session.
- We believe in the power of thought leadership. We publish constantly and guide the conversation with facts and stories, speaking engagements, panels and training sessions. I am pretty sure I did close to 100 speaking engagements this past year, our reach touched 2.5 million Americans directly and generated over 1 billion impressions with a 90% favorability rate. The power of the microphone and megaphone is helping us own our narrative.
- We are creating and disseminating resources, tools and content to equip, educate and mobilize individuals and companies. Our Hispanic Heritage Toolkit alone is downloaded over 85,000 times a year.
- This past year, our podcast, A La Latina: the playbook to succeed being your authentic self, was so successful that we have launched in-person events that we believe will create networks for Latinos that will help them rise to the top in half the time with half the bruises.
- This year, we added to our book series with a biography of Bad Bunny, bringing us to 7 books about Latino heroes in both English and Spanish. We want to inspire the next generation to have dreams without limits. We offer them Latino role models to let them know that everything is possible.
We promise to hit the ground running in 2025. We hope you will join us in our efforts to change perceptions. Because that will change lives and change history.
