This is the second of a five-part series. Part One is here.
This week we highlight some of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Latino leaders. Previous lists of the state’s most influential Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American leaders are published at Madison365.org/MostInfluential.
Gladys Manzanet
Gladys Manzanet is senior director of belonging and impact at Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee, a role she has held since October 2025. She joined the company in 2015 as a multicultural marketing consultant and later served as senior field marketing integration manager for growth markets. From 2019 to 2025, she was senior director of field diversity and inclusion, coaching and consulting with field leadership teams on inclusion efforts. Before joining Northwestern Mutual, she spent much of her career at the engineering and architecture firm HNTB, most recently as a senior creative from 2006 to 2015. In 2005, she founded ¡Pa’lante! Creative, and from 2006 to 2009 she coordinated the Latino Nonprofit Leadership Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has been recognized as a Milwaukee Business Journal Women of Influence. She earned a degree in journalism and public relations from UW-Milwaukee and a diversity and inclusion executive certificate from Cornell.
Tony Castañeda
Tony Castañeda is a musician, radio host and advocate who works as client services manager at Housing Initiatives Inc., a Madison nonprofit that provides housing for people experiencing homelessness and mental illness. He has led his own Latin jazz band since 1998 and has hosted WORT 89.9 FM’s Thursday morning “8 O’Clock Buzz” for more than three decades. A resident of the 76th Assembly District for more than 45 years, he ran in the August 2026 Democratic primary for the 76th Assembly District seat vacated by Rep. Francesca Hong, campaigning on housing affordability, full funding for public schools and the repeal of Act 10. He has also coached youth sports.
Luis Bixler
Luis Bixler is director of the Dane County Department of Public Safety Communications, which operates the county’s 911 center. County Executive Joe Parisi named him to the post in October 2020, and he began in November of that year after serving as a supervisor at the center and as its liaison to the Madison Police Department. He is overseeing the county’s new $30 million 911 operations center, which broke ground in May 2025 and is designed in part to reduce trauma among dispatchers. He previously served as secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials and was named Wisconsin’s 911 Telecommunicator of the Year in 2009. Born in northern Mexico, he moved to the United States at age 5 and later served in the U.S. Army. He earned an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ruben Burgos
Ruben Burgos is president of the board of the Wisconsin Hispanic Scholarship Foundation, which produces Milwaukee’s Mexican Fiesta. The festival began in 1973 as a small celebration on the city’s South Side and now draws about 110,000 people over three days at Henry Maier Festival Park, with proceeds funding scholarships for Latino college students; the foundation has awarded nearly $2 million in scholarships. In 2022, Mayor Cavalier Johnson appointed Burgos to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.
Lucia Loza-Lara Galezewski
Lucia Loza-Lara Galezewski is founder and CEO of ALZA, a Milwaukee-area firm that provides leadership development, fractional executive services and strategic guidance for businesses, communities and workplaces. She launched ALZA in October 2024 after more than 18 years in corporate roles, including as a finance manager at Rockwell Automation, where she also served as president of the company’s Latinx Professional Network employee resource group. The Manufacturing Institute named her a 2022 STEP Ahead honoree, and she previously received the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility’s Young Hispanic Corporate Achiever Award. She serves on the board of directors of the Urban Ecology Center.
Part Three coming tomorrow!
