Sometimes, when Ana Valdez walks into a C-Suite office and introduces herself, she can see the person taking in her Mexican accent and her last name with some surprise. It can get “old, and a little annoying” to re-introduce herself—to explain she’s a CEO who has worked for the United Nations in Geneva and President Bill Clinton’s Administration in Washington, D.C.—but, Valdez says, in some ways, she’s happy to do it: “I like this part of my job. I’m proud to represent whom a Latino should be regarded as.” Today, as president and CEO of the Latino Donor Collaborative, that representation is Valdez’s job in more ways than one.
The LDC is a clearinghouse for original research and what Valdez describes as “data-driven Latino economic advocacy.” In practice, this is what that advocacy looks like: Valdez walks into CEOs’ offices and tells them that, when they think about their Latino customers, they need to transform the image that comes into their heads. Valdez puts the LDC’s data in front of them, and explains that, according to their research, U.S.-based Latinos represent a $4.4 trillion economy. If measured as their own country, U.S.
Latinos would rank as the fourth-largest economy in the world. She is often met with disbelief. Later, back in Mexico City, she worked as a senior account executive with Nielsen.
It was there that Valdez saw the power of market research to change the look of entire cities. Nielsen would tell multinational companies where untapped customers lived, and those companies would then flood those markets with commercials, new stores, and billboards to reach them. In 1996, Valdez became an immigrant, moving to the U.S. to work for the Clinton Administration.
She moved to Los Angeles to support Clinton and Vice President Al Gore’s reelection campaign in ’97 and has called L.A. home ever since. Even with a high-powered background, Valdez had to fight the feeling that she was starting over in the States. In Mexico, saying she went to Tec meant something; in the U.S., it went over people’s heads.
That personal experience, as much as her background, made her a natural fit for the LDC. The LDC was founded in 2010, when a small group of business leaders and former politicians decided to push back against “harmful stereotypes” about Latinos among the business community. The officially nonpartisan organization pursues this goal using market research—the kind of work Valdez did at Nielsen.
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