Six TAMIU Students Selected for Harvard’s Latino Leadership Initiative

Six Texas A&M International University students have been selected to attend this summer’s Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI), underway this week at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA. and sponsored by the Center for Public Leadership (CPL).

Only 42 students are chosen nationwide.  This is the fourth year that TAMIU students have been selected for the weeklong program that prepares rising college seniors for the opportunities and challenges they will face in the coming decades.  Organizers said that 71% of the participants are the first in their families to attend college.

TAMIU students selected for the LLI are Eduardo Castillo, Beatriz González, Leslie Martínez, Jesús Arnulfo Vasquez, Karina Vidal and Lorena Zapata (profiles).

In addition to TAMIU, this year’s program students are drawn from the following schools: Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles); University of California, Merced; the University of Houston; the University of Massachusetts–Boston; the University of Texas–Pan American; Miami Dade College; and the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College.

The LLI curriculum includes classes on public narrative, community organizing, negotiation, moral leadership, emotional intelligence and critical thinking, networking, and public speaking. LLI participants also have opportunities to build relationships with respected Latino mentors from the government, nonprofit, and business sectors.       

This year’s faculty includes Andy Zelleke of Harvard Business School; Marshall Ganz of Harvard Kennedy School; Harvard Divinity School professor Davíd Carrasco; and Georgetown University professor Robert Bies. Among the guest speakers will be Dr. Robert Sackstein, a Harvard Medical School professor who specializes in bone marrow transplants and stem cell research; Dr. Efrain Garza Fuentes, director of multicultural programs at the Walt Disney Company; and Johnny Marines, manager of the Romeo Santos/Aventura music group. Award-winning journalist and NPR host María Hinojosa will be the mistress of ceremonies at the concluding dinner.

After their week in Cambridge, students work in teams with faculty and administration from their home university to design and implement a community service project. Quarterly teleconferences hosted by CPL will promote cross-pollination among the projects while helping students integrate into the projects the personal development goals they identified during LLI.

“We are enormously proud of our students, and of all that LLI has been able to accomplish in the four years since Entravision cofounder and chairman Walter Ulloa’s commitment sparked this initiative,” said Andy Zelleke, LLI faculty director and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. “Including this year’s cohort, there will be 150 talented LLI alumni having impact in their communities and, soon enough, in a range of professions.  And we’re thrilled that, this September, three of them begin their graduate studies at Harvard,” Zelleke noted.

Coca-Cola is the lead sponsor of this year’s initiative. Other supporters include seed donor Entravision Communications; four-year sponsors Texas A&M International University, Univision, Southwest Airlines, and the Walt Disney Company; as well as Time Warner. Local support for TAMIU’s program is generously provided by Eduardo Garza Robles.

For more information about LLI, go to:  http://www.centerforpublicleadership.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=352&Itemid=107

To meet TAMIU students participating in the program, visit tamiu.edu.

CPL was established through a generous gift from the Wexner Foundation.  It seeks to advance the frontiers of knowledge about leadership through research and teaching. It is equally committed to broadening and deepening the pool of leaders for the common good through co-curricular activities that include skill-building workshops, public service fellowships, and programming in leadership for social change.

For more information, go to: www.hks.harvard.edu/leadership

Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at prmis@tamiu.edu