The National Hispana Leadership Institute’s (NHLI) 20th Anniversary Celebrating Latina Leadership!

The institute has since expanded its leadership training to include six Latina Empowerment Conferences across the United States in Omaha, New York City, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Chicago, and Salt Lake City.

Though the institute had reached its five year mark in 1992, and already had at that point 120 graduates under its belt, a summit was organized in San Juan, Puerto Rico that year to discuss the future growth of the institute.

Noting the need for the institute to become more of a player on the political front, the institute moved its headquarters from Denver to the nation’s capital – Washington D.C. in 1993. This was also the year the group held what would become a standing tradition – the Annual Mujer Award Gala to honor the lifetime achievements of women who served the Hispanic community.
Antonia Pantojas, founder of ASPIRA would be the first recipient honored in an awards gala that has honored a Diaspora of talents from Mexican-American actress Eva Longoria, talk show host, Cristina Saralegui, to former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Antonia Coello Novello.

“These are women that you grew up hearing about, that you wrote book reports on for their accomplishments on, and here I am getting the opportunity to meet them,” says Katrina Ruiz, an elementary school teacher in Miami, who had the opportunity to meet Novello as a graduate of the Institute’s Latinas Learning to Lead program.

Catered toward younger college aged Latinas, the LLL program was formed in 2001 as part of the Institute’s goal to continue breeding future Latina leaders.

As part of the program two dozen Latinas between the ages of 17 and 24 convene in Washington D.C. for the week to learn skills from public speaking to conflict resolution.

Ruiz, a graduate of the University of Florida credits the program with helping her hone in on her passion for poetry and how she can utilize it as an agent of change. Upon arriving at UF for the fall semester, Ruiz began a poetry group dubbed “The Apartment Poets” and began touring different college campus performing monologues about the struggles of growing up in a bi-cultural world.

She also utilized her involvement in her campus’ chapter of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Inc. to implement a program where her sorority sisters would mentor a group of middle school students and teach them about Hispanic culture. “Latinas Learning to Lead definitely helped give me that push to make me realize that as long as you put your heart behind something, the sky is the limit as to what you can achieve,’’ Ruiz says.

Hon. Loretta Sanchez, Linda Mazon-Gutierrez, NHLI president Marisa Rivera-Albert and Congresswoman Grace Napolitano

Now a part of the Teach for America program, Ruiz says the lessons gained from the Latina Leadership program are those she attempts to instill in her students, many who hail from disadvantaged backgrounds. “When you affect one woman, she affects hundreds of other women,” Duran says. “That’s one of our biggest success stories.” Success stories abound in this network of hermanas. All one has to do is scroll down the pages of the group’s website, or a mere flip of the page from the groups newsletter and brochures. There you will find stories like those of Virginia Arauza Madueno being elected Vice Mayor for the City of Riverbank, California to Giovanna Negretti being named one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos by El Planeta Newspaper in Boston. The institute itself has also been gaining accolades on the national level since its inception. By 2005 the Institute was bestowed with such award as the Leadership Independent Sector Award, the Center for Creative Leadership Distinguished Alumni Award and Rivera-Albert received the Cesar Chavez Award from the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. Even as the success stories trickle in and the network continues to expand, Rivera-Albert says there is still much more that need to be done. She would like to see a program that caters to young Latina professionals who fall in between the requirements of the Latinas Learning to Lead program and the professionally geared Executive Leadership program.

“We’ve come very far but there are still a lot of inroads that have to be made,” Rivera-Albert says. “We still have younger Latinas who don’t even view college as a possibility. We have Latina professionals who are working twice as hard to prove themselves but only seeing half the benefits. We have that constant cultural struggle that Latinas are suppose to be the CEO of their homes, before they are the CEO of their own companies. Because of the culture we are raised in, where Latino families are so close knit a lot of Latinas feel as though they either have to sacrifice their home life to advance in their career, or sacrifice their career in order to appease the family back home. We’re just trying to show these women that they can think outside of these realms.”

NHLI 2004 fellows with Senator Hillary Clinton

The 2003 Latinas Learning to Lead (LLL) at the Washington Monument in D.C.

At the eve of the institute’s 20-year anniversary, Duran says she would like to see the institute have its own building in the next 20 years, to avoid always having to rely on other spaces for meetings and leadership trainings. The institute also kicked off a $3 million fundraising campaign called “Vision Forward: Growing Latina Leaders” to help sponsor more leadership initiatives. Duran also pointed to the institute’s future growth outside of the United States, due in large part to alumnae who have moved to other countries but have applied their learnings from the institute in their respective new countries. She also credits Rivera-Albert with traveling outside of the United States to spread the word about what organizations like NHLI can accomplish. “There has been a great interest in Latin America about the program,” Duran says. “There’s definitely more room for an international component to NHLI.” The institute’s future and growth is also very much pegged on the successes of its alumnae who continue to come back to institute functions with the desire to give back.

2002 alumni reunion

2005 NHLI awards

“When my first book was coming out, right after my family, they were the second people I told the news to,” Santiago says. “They would come to my book signings and showed me immense support. We call each other hermanas, because in essence we are there for one another like family…I have complete faith that NHLI will continue to strive. There are always women out there with ambition and a dream.”

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By Laura Figueroa