L’ATTITUDE 2019 finished with a bang. This year’s event once again featured some of the top leaders in business, politics, entertainment and journalism. The session with Marc Benioff and Oscar Munoz was a highlight for me. The two business titans spoke about some of the more consequential issues facing our country and finished their session by pledging a million dollars each to the L’ATTITUDE Match-Up fund. Match-Up is a new program within L’ATTITUDE where Latino entrepreneurs are matched with capital sources. A study from The Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative indicates Latino entrepreneurs are the most underfunded in the country and L’ATTITUDE strives to be a platform to correct that. L’ATTITUDE also unveiled a new partnership with Robert Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, called LATINXT, where the top up and coming Latino talent in film and television would be showcased. Both programs show a ton of promise and could help launch the careers of the next generation of Latino stars in both business and entertainment. In only our second year, there is no event in the nation that attracts such a remarkable cross-section of Latino talent than L’ATTITTUDE, and I am already thinking a lot about some of the things we can do next year. Thanks to everyone who attended this year, our journey has only begun.
“Boomerang” was a different kind of film. It was a movie about friendship, loyalty, and romance set in NYC at a medium-sized Black-led company that sold beauty products. Boomerang had an all-black cast and a plot that had nothing to do with being Black. While that was unheard of at the time, Murphy was such a big star that it didn’t seem like a big deal.
About a year ago, I was convinced by some of my closest friends that I should do a podcast. Today it seems like everyone has a podcast, and frankly, 99% of them aren’t very good. I wasn’t sure I could do much better, but I realized I do have some ideas that some people have found interesting in the past.
The decision to invite President Barack Obama to the NAHREP Policy Conference last Spring was a decision I made with the NAHREP National Board. Anytime we have a political figure of that stature at one of our events, we know it will stimulate a lot of buzz among our members and stakeholders.