2021 Fall Symposium

Marilyn Alverio

Having grown up in an urban neighborhood, Marilyn learned early on about the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents migrated to the U.S. from Puerto Rico in the early 1950s and instilled the importance of “la Familia,” our culture, language, and “La Communidad.” She earned a B.A from the University of Conn. in Storrs, CT and an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix. Marilyn has worked in the corporate arena for more than twenty years where she has held numerous management positions within the airline, pharmaceutical, education, financial, and health insurance industries.

She is the creator and producer of the Latinas and Power Symposium® (LPS), which is achieving national recognition. The annual one-day inspirational and professional development platform is designed for the Latina on the go.

Marilynn Cruz-Aponte

Marilynn Cruz-Aponte is a Connecticut Government Leader and Executive Public Administrator with in-depth experience in strategic program planning, government services restructuring, municipal financial management, human resource leadership, communications, and public labor relations.

During her 30-year career she has held public works leadership positions in Hartford, East Hartford and New Britain, Connecticut specializing in environmental and solid waste planning, labor-management relations with a focus on organizational analyses and procedural and program improvements. Her earlier career was spent working for eight years as an Environmental Aide to Connecticut Governor William O’Neill.

Some of her successful initiatives include:

In 2013 Marilynn restructured city sanitation collection routes which improved service to 6,600 residents, reduced operating costs, balanced employee workloads and discontinued services to customers identified as ineligible. Cost savings to the City of Hartford were estimated to be $250,000 annually. In 2017, a similar initiative in East Hartford reduced refuse collection from 4 to 3 daily routes creating significant staffing efficiencies.

Due to Marilynn’s two-year effort preparing and advocating for the passage of a mattress stewardship and recycling bill, the United States’ first mattress recycling law was passed in Connecticut in 2013. This law has saved Connecticut municipalities over $1.3M in annual disposal fees. Rhode Island and California passed a similar bill, and ten other states have embraced it as a national model.

Marilynn drove the implementation of recycling programs in New Britain, Hartford and East Hartford. She designed a single-stream recycling program in Hartford which increased recycling by 111% and resulted in an estimated $314,000 in avoided waste disposal costs annually. Her 2021 Recycling STAR Program, a web-based resident self-education tool, targets resident behavior that results in contamination of materials in blue recycling carts. This new program is reflective of similar successful environmental marketing and communications efforts that Marilynn has designed.

Marilynn holds a Masters of Social Work Administration from the Catholic University of America and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Saint Joseph College for Women.

She has served as a Connecticut Municipal Board Member to the national Product Stewardship Institute, has been a Director for the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority and the Task Force for Modernizing Recycling, and an Advisory Board member for the Holy Family Passionist Monastery in West Hartford, Connecticut. Marilynn is a volunteer young adult mentor and career coach promoting skill development in budgeting, environmental advocacy, business writing, communications and project management.

Marilynn continually looks for unique ways to create meaningful change through reprogramming and repurposing to make public and government organizations competitive and sustainable while reducing costs.

Arminda “Mindy” Figueroa

Founder and CEO, Latin2Latin Marketing + Communications (L2L) is celebrating her 12th year at the helm of L2L, a multiple award-winning engagement solutions agency headquartered in downtown Fort Lauderdale with satellite offices in NY, NC and Puerto Rico. A true maverick, Figueroa is a long-recognized leader in the traditional, multicultural, direct and digital marketing fields. She has built a successful career focused on generating awareness of the essential role of the multicultural market in corporate America. Prior to launching L2L, Figueroa was Project Director for Scholastic Media, and oversaw the launch of the #1 ranked PBS children’s television series, Maya & Miguel. Previously, she held senior marketing positions at The Bravo Group (a Young & Rubicam agency), Univision.com, Verizon, and Anheuser-Busch.

Figueroa is a sought-after presenter at industry seminars and conferences. Most recently, she served as a panelist for Radio Ink and Hispanic Unity of Florida’s E Summit on women entrepreneurs. Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Figueroa served as an advisor to Gov. Rick Scott for the South Florida relief efforts for Puerto Rico and is the proud founder of the philanthropic grassroots organization, Adopt a Puerto Rican Family. Figueroa served on the board of the Hispanic Federation for 16 years and helped raise more than $25M as part of the gala committee.

Today, she is a board member of the Tower Club of Fort Lauderdale, member of Advisory Council of Hispanic Federation, founding member of the Women’s Council of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Marketing Council of Hispanic Unity. She has been recognized by El Diario/La Prensa as one of the “50 Most Influential Latinas,” by South Florida Business Journal as one of the top “Influential Business Women of 2017,” and she also received the Golden Mouse Award for Multicultural Marketing Leader of the Year by the Florida Chapter of Women in Ecommerce. Most recently, she was awarded the Diversity in Business by the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.

Yvonne Garcia

Yvonne Garcia is a Fortune 500 C-suite executive with more than 25 years of experience leading business strategy, client engagement, operations management, executive leadership oversight, and marketing and communications, both domestically and globally. As a multicultural executive, she has deep experience operating in international markets, including Asia Pacific and Latin America, and is highly respected for building strong, sustainable relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.

Currently, Yvonne serves as Chief of Staff to Chairman and CEO, Global Head of Communications, and Head of Global CEO Experience Program for State Street. In these roles, Yvonne is responsible for the setting and execution of the Chairman and CEO’s firmwide strategic priorities, State Street’s internal communications strategy for over 40,000 employees and numerous executive leadership platforms, and the delivery of a program including State Street’s most strategic clients representing over $6B in revenue, with a mission of gaining insights on how State Street can help its clients achieve better outcomes for those they serve. Before these roles, Yvonne led State Street’s Global Client Solutions and Implementation team within Investment Management Services (IMS) for close to ten years.

Prior to State Street, Yvonne served as Director in Marketing and Distribution Strategy for Liberty Mutual and as Vice President for Bank of America’s China Construction Bank Strategic Assistance Program. In that role, Yvonne and her team created and implemented over five new Wealth Management Centers throughout China which resulted in over 80 centers currently throughout the country. Yvonne is a fully certified Six Sigma Black Belt, and applies that discipline, rigor, and process to every project on which she deploys.

As an active leader of local and national communities, Yvonne served as the Chairwoman for the largest Latino Professional Organization in the country, ALPFA. Yvonne is also the co-founding Chair of Milagros para Niños, a board at Children’s Hospital in Boston, which has raised more than $14 million in funds for Hispanic children who can’t afford medical care. In addition, Yvonne was appointed by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to serve on the state’s Latino Advisory Commission Board and was also appointed as the Chairwoman for the Greater Boston Chamber’s Women’s Network. Yvonne has been featured in Fortune magazine in partnership with ALPFA as one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Latinas in the United States four years in a row and just last year was named to Boston Business Journal’s Power 50. This year, Yvonne was recognized by the Boston Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business and by Yahoo Finance on their top 10 HERoes list nationally showcasing leaders who are championing women in business and driving change for gender diversity in the workplace.

Yvonne holds an MBA from Boston University in Finance and Marketing and a BA from SUNY Albany and is a Six Sigma Black Belt. Last year Yvonne was awarded an honorary degree in Doctor of Humane Letters from Cambridge College in Boston, Massachusetts and, most recently, an honorary degree in Doctor of Commerce from New England School of Business.

Adriana Waterston

Adriana Waterston, Chief Revenue Officer and Insights & Strategy Lead for Horowitz Research, oversees the agency’s Latinx, BIPOC, millennial, and Gen Z research. She is a research junkie with a flair for finding the story behind the statistics, teasing meaning out of measurements, and revealing the faces behind the facts. A thought leader in the Latinx space, Adriana has consulted for clients in entertainment and news media, technology and telecommunications, travel and hospitality, CPG, and toys, among others. On the consumer side, Adriana helps clients reach, serve, and resonate with Latinx and BIPOC consumers. On the DEI side, she helps companies address issues of corporate culture and talent development, particularly for Latinx, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and employees with disabilities.

A Puerto Rico native, Adriana was named one of the “Most Influential Minorities in Cable” by Cablefax Magazine. She is frequently quoted in the trade press and has presented at numerous events including the Cultural Insights Forum, NAMIC conference, Hispanic TV Summit, Streaming TV Summit, NAB, Media Insights and Engagement, ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) events, and others. Among other accolades, Adriana received two CTAM TAMI awards and the Agency Executive Award for Research & Measurement for her multicultural work.