HispanicBusiness

• Overview
• Location
• Agenda
• Winners
• Scholarship
• History
• Sponsor

• Lifetime Achievement Award

Elizabeth Padilla
Georgia Institute of Technology

Elizabeth Padilla is a Ph.D candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology´s Environmental Microbiology program. Ms. Padilla was sure she wanted to become a scientist after traveling to Postdam, Germany to participate in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Science Steering and Evaluation Panel in Potsdam. She hopes to use her degree to safeguard the environment, and as a teacher urge her students to create their own opportunities.
Ms. Padilla´s Winner´s Circle Scholarship is sponsored by Wachovia, a diversified financial services company that provides a broad range of retail banking and brokerage, asset and wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services.

Alejandro Virrueta
Stanford University

The son of Mexican immigrants, Alejandro Virrueta spends his weekends traveling from San Francisco to Bakersfield delivering wine caskets and building wine cellars with his father, CEO of Pacific Wine Cellar Consultants. His father´s initiative and resiliency inspire Mr. Virrueta, who graduated valedictorian of Sierra High School in 2008 and now attends Stanford University where he studies Mechanical Engineering. Mr. Virrueta looks forward to being the first person in his family to hold a college degree.
His Winner´s Circle Scholarship is sponsored by Palladium Equity, a company that provides equity capital to companies seeking to grow, restructure or provide liquidity for shareholders.

Elias Popuch
Macalester College

Elias Popuch is a senior majoring in Geography at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is currently working on an honors project on the effects of Empowerment Zones on the economic development in Minneapolis, MN. Mr. Popuch aspires to become an urban planner and analyst, committed to social justice as it related to the people and the spaces they occupy. He is proficient in Spanish and teaches ESL to members of the Hispanic community.
His Winner´s Circle Scholarship is sponsored by KPMG, a company that helps its clients successfully respond to changing opportunities by providing professional services, wherever and whenever they are needed.

Veronica Reyes
USC

Veronica Reyes is passionate about international development. A first generation Salvadorian American, she attributes her success to her family´s courage in leaving their homeland, a country engulfed by civil war. Ms. Reyes will graduate from USC in 2009 with a master´s degree in Public Administration, then pursue an MBA at Harvard University. Ms. Reyes aspires to work for the United Nations Children’s Fund to aid impoverished communities.
Her Winner´s Circle Scholarship is sponsored by the Cordoba Corporation, a civil engineering, construction management, program management, and planning firm specializing in education, transportation, and water.

Photos by Matt Graves