> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Highlights from HOPE's 33rd Annual "Latina History Day" - URL: https://www.latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com/highlights-from-hopes-33rd-annual-latina-history-day/ - Published: 2026-07-08T22:26:51.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-06T17:56:06.000Z - Description: Nearly 1,200 people filled a Los Angeles ballroom for Hispanas Organized for Political Equality's Latina History Day, where storytelling and strategy shared the same stage. - Author: Rafael Magaña - Tags: Culture, Community Twelve hundred people filled a Los Angeles ballroom this March for [Hispanas Organized for Political Equality](https://www.latinas.org/?ref=latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com)'s thirty-third annual Latina History Day Conference, and the number told part of the story on its own. HOPE built this gathering on a premise that has held for decades: political power and economic power for Latinas rise or fall together, and once a year the conference functions as a public accounting of that work. CEO Helen Iris Torres led the day, setting a table where keynote addresses, workshops, and networking ran alongside each other rather than in competition. The lineup of speakers read like a cross-section of where Latina leadership now sits in American public life. [Alejandra Campoverdi](https://www.alejandracampoverdi.com/?ref=latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com), advocate and author of "First Gen: A Memoir," spoke to a path shaped by a working-class upbringing and a life since spent in public service and in print. [Linda Yvette Chávez](https://lindayvettechavez.com/?ref=latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com), writer and showrunner, director of "Gentefied" and writer of "Flamin' Hot," addressed the harder-to-see labor of getting a story about a community told correctly inside an industry not built to tell it. Jaina Lee Ortiz, an actress and a proud Puerto Rican American, spoke from the main stage about her commitment to her community. Julián Castro, CEO of the [Latino Community Foundation](https://latinocf.org/?ref=latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com), brought the vantage point of someone who moves between philanthropy and public life, two systems that rarely trust each other but that both decide who gets resourced. None of these speakers arrived at the podium by the same route, and putting them on one stage was its own kind of argument: that leadership takes more than one shape, and that the record of Latina advancement runs through film sets and foundation boardrooms in equal measure. Latina Professionals sent a delegation that went well past a single table. Co-founders Rafael Magaña and Kimberly attended alongside members of the organization's Board of Directors, Board of Governors, and steering committees, among them Blanca Gonzalez of the Board of Governors, Angelina Hernandez of the Latina Mental Health National Steering Committee, Stephanie De Anda, director of philanthropy at the Parent Institute for Quality Education, and Karla V. Salazar, executive director of ScholarMatch. Their presence said something plain: an organization built to serve Latina professionals sends its own leadership into rooms like this one, not only to represent the community but to be shaped by it. A book signing with Campoverdi closed out one corner of the day, an ordinary scene that still carried the conference's larger point, that a Latina's own story, written down, is not incidental to political equality. It is a form of it. Thirty-three iterations in, HOPE's Latina History Day functions less like an annual event and more like an institution keeping its own record. Each cohort of speakers, each delegation of attendees, adds to an argument that predates any single conference: that the distance between where Latinas stand today and where the country's centers of capital and governance sit is closing, room by room, one conference at a time. --- ### Event Host The [**Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE)**](https://www.latinas.org/?ref=latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com), a nonprofit led by CEO Helen Iris Torres that builds Latina political and economic power through leadership training and advocacy, presented this event. The 33rd Annual Latina History Day, themed "Soar: Reach New Heights," was held March 8, 2024, at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE. --- Reported and written by **Rafael Magaña**, Founder & Publisher, for *Latino Professionals Magazine*. [→ Full archive](https://www.latinoprofessionalsmagazine.com/author/rafael-magana/) **RECORD №00117 · MMXXVI · Latino Professionals Magazine** Published by Latino Professionals Media Group. Documenting the people, ideas, and institutions shaping American business.