Just months after we published our first news stories in August 2015, we tried something new: we listed and published brief biographies of the state’s 28 Most Influential Black Leaders. People really liked it, shared it on social media, and told us who else should have been on that list. Many asked me if we’d do another list the next year; I said yes, we probably would.
We did more than that. That next year, we published another list of the state’s most influential Black leaders, as well as a list of the state’s most influential Latino leaders.
This week we are proud to present the 11th annual edition of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Latino Leaders.
Every year, with every list, I’ve intended to highlight the beauty of the diversity across our state. I want kids here in Wisconsin to see role models of people who are succeeding, to know that it’s possible for people of color to achieve great things here.
This week, we shine a statewide spotlight on the dedicated leaders of Wisconsin’s Latino. The people we highlight this week are elected leaders, business leaders and community leaders, doing difficult, important work, often in the face of discrimination.
We are also aware that this list, like every other, is not comprehensive. It’s obvious just from the number of nominations that there are far more than 23 influential Latino leaders doing good work in Wisconsin. We hope you will let us know about people in your community who we can include on future lists. For now, though, we just want to introduce you to a few of the people doing the work, often behind the scenes and without the accolades, across Wisconsin.
You might know a few of these names, but there’s a good chance that most of them will be new to you. I urge you to get to know them. Reach out to those living and working in your communities. Learn from them, network, and create partnerships. And spread the word — let others in your network know that we have people of all ethnicities living and working across Wisconsin to make sure everyone here can thrive.
Henry Sanders
CEO, 365 Media Foundation
Publisher, Madison365
Amanda Roman
Amanda Roman is founder and CEO of Domina Consulting, a Racine-based women- and minority-owned firm she launched in 2021. The firm consults small and medium-sized businesses as well as corporate and government clients, helps businesses obtain MBE, DBE, WBE and VOSB certifications, and offers diversity and inclusion consulting and outreach and engagement support for major construction projects. Domina Consulting has worked with Racine County to expand opportunities for local workers and businesses on the construction of the county’s new care center. Before starting the firm, Roman worked in banking, payroll and HR consulting, and project management. She was named the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 Wisconsin Minority Small Business Champion. She serves on the boards of the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Southeast Wisconsin, the Racine County Economic Development Corporation and the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation. She studied classical archaeology, geospatial science and religion.
Victor Huyke
Victor Huyke is founder, publisher and CEO of El Conquistador Latino Newspaper and Events in Milwaukee. He founded the paper in 1998, and it became a weekly within a year. The bilingual publication, printed half in English and half in Spanish, is the only Latino-owned newspaper in southeastern Wisconsin and distributes copies across Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Waukesha. Its events arm produces free community events including a Cinco de Mayo festival, a Puerto Rican festival, a wedding and quinceañera show, and the Latino Family Expo. Before launching El Conquistador, Huyke wrote for the Spanish Journal and the Spanish Times. Born in Puerto Rico, he moved to Milwaukee as a child in the early 1970s. His great-grandfather, Juan Bernardo Huyke, was a Puerto Rican educator and publisher who served as interim governor of Puerto Rico in 1923.
Alex Ayala
Alex Ayala is president of the Milwaukee Police Association, the union representing Milwaukee police officers, a role he has held since 2024 after serving as the union’s vice president. A detective, he joined the Milwaukee Police Department directly after high school and worked his way up from police aide to patrol officer to detective, mostly on the city’s South Side. He is president of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Latino Peace Officers Association and national parliamentarian of the organization, and has worked to recruit Latino officers to the department. As union president, he has led the association through contract negotiations with the city. UMOS named him Hispanic Man of the Year in 2023. He previously received a Hometown Heroes Award from the Wisconsin State Assembly for rescuing a 5-year-old boy from the Menomonee River.
Kalista Ysquierdo
Kalista “Kali” Ysquierdo is an outreach specialist with the Menard Family Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where she supports programs focused on entrepreneurship, free markets, economic opportunity and student engagement. She has a background in marketing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from UW-La Crosse.
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.
Allison Mead
Allison Mead is a convention sales manager at Destination Madison, where she leads the organization’s work in the multicultural market, a position new to the organization. She joined Destination Madison in 2022 as partnership development manager, a role in which she added 135 new partner businesses. She is also an independent Aflac agent who works in English and Spanish with small business owners and their employees on supplemental benefits. She founded TrainConAllison, a bilingual personal training business focused on women, particularly women of color. She also founded Pickléros Madison, a group that brings Latino residents together through weekly bilingual pickleball meetups and larger events. Earlier in her career, she was associate director of the Wisconsin Latino Chamber of Commerce, where she worked with Latino-owned businesses. She also helped lead the Culture Collective, a pop-up shop program run by the Black, Hmong and Latino chambers of commerce with the City of Madison. She mentors with Big Brothers Big Sisters and previously served on the board of conNEXTions, where she was once a mentee. A Madison native of Peruvian descent, she is bilingual in English and Spanish.
Fernando Cano Ospina
Fernando Cano Ospina is director of administration and inclusion at RISE Wisconsin, a Dane County nonprofit that provides community-based mental health and wellness services to children, families and adults. He represents RISE on the Latino Health Council of Dane County and has been involved in the BIPOC Mental Health Coalition, a Dane County-supported effort to address mental health disparities among communities of color. La Movida named him Community Leader of the Year at its 14th annual Hispanic Heritage Luncheon in 2024.
Dr. Daniel Tataje
Dr. Daniel Tataje is founder and CEO of Mercy Dental Group, which operates a dozen dental practices in Madison, Middleton, Fitchburg, Sun Prairie, Lodi, DeForest, Stoughton, Cottage Grove and Evansville. Originally from Peru, he has practiced dentistry for nearly three decades. Mercy Dental Group was named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. in 2021, and Tataje was named Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 by Midwest Family Broadcasting and the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Dane County. He also founded Mercy Dental Missions, a nonprofit that provides affordable and free dental care locally and runs mission trips to underserved communities abroad, and Lumen Enterprises. He is an author and speaker on leadership. He earned his doctorate in dentistry from Inca Garcilaso de la Vega University in Peru and completed advanced training in prosthodontics, TMD and orofacial pain through the University of Minnesota and the University of Kentucky.
Dr. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the university’s Puerto Rican Studies Hub, which launched in October 2025 with a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is the first initiative of its kind in the Midwest. He wrote the Spanish-language historical texts that accompany the 17 visualizers for Bad Bunny’s 2025 album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” covering Puerto Rican history from Indigenous resistance to the present; the visualizers have drawn more than 230 million views. He is the author of “Puerto Rico: A National History” (Princeton University Press, 2024) and “The Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico” (Duke University Press, 2021). Before his doctoral studies, he taught high school history in Puerto Rico. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico and a doctorate from the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Ida Balderrama-Trudell
Dr. Ida Balderrama-Trudell is director of belonging, culture and impact at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, where she has worked since January 2022, joining as director of equity and innovation. She previously spent more than 20 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in roles including director of student engagement in the School of Education’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; chief of staff in the Dean of Students Office; interim director of the Multicultural Student Center; and assistant director and academic adviser for the Posse Scholars program. She is also founder and principal consultant of Ida B Tru Consulting. She grew up in West Texas.che earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and human development and family studies from Texas Tech University and a doctorate in education from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Johnathan Delgado
Johnathan Delgado is founder and owner of Delgado Campaign Solutions, a small business dedicated to uplifting communities through meaningful relationships and culturally centered initiatives through small business development. He is also founder of the Puerto Rican Awareness Project, a coalition and organization devoted to recognizing and acknowledging the Puerto Rican Diaspora in Wisconsin. Johnathan chaired the Community Initiative Action Council with the United Way Of Dane County, was appointed by the Mayor to serve on the city of Madison Public Safety Review Committee, and has led multiple successful campaigns for local government. Recently, Johnathan has returned to complete his undergraduate degree in Psychotherapy and Social Work.
Pedro Colón
Pedro Colón is a judge on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District I, and a candidate in the 2027 election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Gov. Tony Evers appointed him to the appeals court in November 2023, making him the first Latino to serve on it. He previously served as a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge from 2010 to 2023 after being appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle. From 1999 to 2010, he represented Milwaukee’s 8th District in the Wisconsin State Assembly, where he was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Legislature. He announced his Supreme Court candidacy in April 2026. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Marquette University and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Julia Arata-Fratta
Julia Arata-Fratta is mayor of Fitchburg, the first Latina to hold the office. First elected in April 2023, she won re-election in April 2026. She previously served on the Fitchburg Common Council from 2015 to 2023, including as council president in 2020, and chaired the city’s finance committee and Community Economic Development Authority. She is also a senior manager in client advisory services at Wegner CPAs and has more than 20 years of experience as an accountant, business consultant and tax preparer. She serves on the board of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, is a former chair of the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Dane County and co-founded the Latino Professionals Association. Originally from Argentina, she has lived in Fitchburg since 2004. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business and accounting from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina and an MBA from Kennesaw State University.
Cynthia Bell Jiménez
Cynthia Bell Jiménez is principal of Meadow View Elementary School in the Sun Prairie Area School District, where she has been a principal for more than seven years. Under her leadership, Meadow View earned Leader in Me Lighthouse certification, which recognizes schools for their work on student leadership and school culture. She received the Charles L. Hopson Racial Equity Principal Leadership Award through the National Courageous Conversation recognition program. She also works with educators and school districts on building school and workplace cultures centered on dignity, belonging and accountability. Before Meadow View, she coordinated and taught in dual language programs in the Delavan-Darien and Waukesha school districts, and she has worked as a bilingual teacher leader, curriculum developer and coach. She has more than two decades of experience in education. Born and raised in San José, Costa Rica, she moved to the United States in 2009. She holds master’s degrees in clinical psychology, education and educational leadership.
