10 Influential Chicago Latinas You Need to Know
Chicago is home to many amazing things (culture, sports, and most importantly food!), but what stands out the most is the people. Mix the New York City hustle mindset with midwestern generosity and you get a unique kind of person: a Chicagoan. The best part of Chicago is its rich and diverse Latinx community, which is nearly 30 percent of Chicago’s population. Among them are some of the most dynamic and fierce Latinas who exhibit the characteristics of true change-makers. From community activists to venture capitalists, Chicago’s leading Latinas are influencing innovation and transformation within the community and beyond. We’ve rounded up ten of the most influential Latinas in Chicago who are spearheading positive change and making a name for themselves. If you’re not familiar with these change makers yet you soon will be, because their influence and impact will only grow stronger through the decades.
1. Tanya Lozano
Organization: Healthy Hood Chicago
Tanya Lozano has activism in her blood. Raised by a former member of the Chicago Black Panther Party and a senior advisor to the Harold Washington campaign, Tanya watched her family dedicate their lives to activism. The Lozano Chicago Public Library Branch and Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy are named after her uncle, Rudy Lozano, a slain activist who helped get Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, in office.
Driven by the desire to see healthy changes in her own community, Lozano created the non-profit organization Healthy Hood Chicago in 2014 to promote wellness education to fight the life expectancy gap for underprivileged Chicagoans. In response to COVID-19, Lozano created a spin-off organization, We Got Us, which has recruited more than 1,000 volunteers and addresses immediate needs in the community like food and masks.
2. NK Gutiérrez
Organization: Thickletic
NK Gutiérrez is an actor, filmmaker, fitness instructor, body activist, and founder of Thickletic. Her organization elevates the conversation around wellness inclusivity by cultivating conversation, clothing, and community. Thickletic also gives back to marginalized communities through Thickletes Give Back. Along with the community service that Gutiérrez has done in Chicago, she decided to give back internationally. Last year, Gutiérrez ran a marathon in Havana, Cuba for “Apoyo para las Cubanas” to bring awareness to the needs of women in Cuba. Leading up to the marathon, she held several fundraisers to collect donations of bras, underwear, soap, toothpaste and other items. She put together 200 care packages that were distributed to women in Cuba in very remote areas. Along with giving back to underserved communities, Gutiérrez is always spreading positivity through meditation events and fitness classes around the city of Chicago.
3. Samara Mejia Hernandez
Organization: Chingona Ventures
Samara Mejia Hernandez is the Founding Partner of an institutionally-backed pre-seed stage fund, Chingona Ventures, focusing on investing in technology and technology-enabled companies all over the United States. Prior to this she was an early stage investor at MATH Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund investing in technology start-ups with differentiated approaches to customer acquisition. In this capacity, she led new investment review, diligence and execution. Prior to venture capital, Samara worked at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top five in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting on business practices.
Hernandez is actively involved in the Chicago tech community and passionate about helping underrepresented groups get into STEM education, venture capital and entrepreneurship. She co-founded the Latinx Founders Collective organization to bring together Latinx founders, investors, and community leaders to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
4. Jacqueline Priego
Organization: PinkSlipped
Jacqueline Priego is the writer, creator, co-director and actress of the Latinx web series PinkSlipped. Priego’s passion for social justice and women’s rights manifested itself in the form of PinkSlipped which she debuted in the fall of 2018 in Chicago.
The show follows the lives of three best friends navigating their careers while coming to terms that they are greater than the sum of their stifling jobs, self-sabotage and cultural stereotypes with the focus on three themes: tokenism, immigration and equal pay.
Jacqueline is currently preparing to pitch her show to streaming services like Hulu, HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime, to name a few. This past January, Priego was a panelist at The Latinx House at the Sundance Film Festival, the very first official Sundance space for Latinx by Latinx.
5. Ximena Larkin
Organization: C1 Revolution
Ximena Larkin is a freelance writer and founder of C1 Revolution, a communication consultancy started in 2014. Prior to founding C1 Revolution, Larkin worked on communication teams for Walgreens, DePaul University and iHeart Media. Currently, Larkin’s client list has grown to include non-profits, start-ups, personal brands and large-scale events. She’s worked with Portillo’s, AT&T, the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, and more. In 2020, she served as director of special projects in the office of public engagement for the Democratic National Convention. Shortly after, she joined the Biden/Harris Presidential Campaign as deputy director of Latino/Spanish media.
Larkin’s freelance work has gone viral several times and has appeared in CNN, Cosmo, New York Magazine, Bustle, Entrepreneur, and more.
6. Jackson Flores
Organization: DishRoulette
Jackson Flores is the President of DishRoulette, a Chicago non-profit organization that supports restaurants from the ground up by providing financial support through state-funded grants, private donations, and local fundraising. Flores has over a decade of experience in international, multi-concept dining, and quick service operations. Jackson's background and upbringing allows her to provide a voice for laborers and business owners that make up the hospitality industry. Jackson's ability to listen and lead is exactly why she has contributed to hundreds of training programs and concept build-outs. Jackson specializes in developing operational foundations and processes for every level of restaurants from quick-service to fine-dining; built to launch, scale, and sustain profitability from concept to completion.
To date, Dish Roulette’s DRK Campaign has invested $40,000 across 40 Chicago restaurants and food vendors. The campaign aims to directly support entrepreneurs that have been left behind by economic relief programs – specifically, women, people of color and undocumented entrepreneurs.
7. Cristina Vera
Organization: Vera Creative
Cristina Vera is the founder of Vera Creatives and an award-winning communications strategist with over 20 years of leadership, marketing, and community engagement expertise. Her efforts have resulted in more resources, representation, and funding for under-served communities across Chicago. She's also partnered with countless city-wide non-profits to advocate for education, the arts, and community health and wellness.
Most recently, she worked on an awareness campaign for the 2020 U.S. Census to increase participation among minorities and hard-to-reach communities for both Cook County and the City of Chicago. Her recent endeavors also include developing the city-wide Chicago Early Learning marketing campaign. In addition, Vera has successfully worked to increase Latino enrollment by ten percent for the Chicago Head Start campaign, and fully enrolling 25,000 children for the Chicago Park District summer day camp.
8. Nubia Willman
Organization: Latinas Uprising
Nubia Willman is the editor and founder of Latinas Uprising, a community for new and aspiring attorneys seeking to excel in the legal field. Latinas Uprising helps new and aspiring attorneys through the higher education maze and provides tools to overcome the systemic barriers of law school. The organization also provides practical knowledge to advance one’s legal practice. Latinas Uprising’s goal is to increase the 1.3 percent of Latina lawyers in the United States while fostering a formidable group of Latinas who are ready to lead both in their jobs and communities.
Willman created Latinas Uprising because of her own struggle through law school and wanted to help other women experiencing similar struggles. It wasn’t until after law school that she realized many of those experiences and feelings had less to do with her and more to do with systemic oppression and implicit bias that impacts all of our educational and professional careers. Willman’s goal with Latinas Uprising is to expose those barriers and provide new and aspiring attorneys the tools to recognize and overcome them.
9. Diana Gutiérrez
Organization: News Reporter, The Jam
Diana Gutiérrez is a news reporter for WCIU’s The Jam and understands the importance of unbiased journalism. Born to immigrant parents on the city’s Southwest side, Gutiérrez is passionate about storytelling and is always ready to report and cover the city’s top stories of the day. As a board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, she focuses on keeping their mantra alive, “More Latinos in News”.
Gutiérrez discovered her passion for journalism while she was studying abroad in Madrid, Spain. Soon after, she received her bachelor's degree from DePaul University and kicked off her career in South Bend, Indiana where she was a weekday general assignment reporter and weekend morning anchor. Gutiérrez has covered everything from immigration reform, severe weather, and festivals.
10. Samantha & Alexis Symser-De Leon
Organization: Sistematic Podcast
These influential sisters are twins born and raised in Humboldt Park, Chicago, a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood, where their family has been deeply rooted since the 1950s.
Samantha is a visual artist, professional stunt woman, community organizer, and activist. In 2020 she was commissioned to create a sculpture for Nike's NBA All-Star Weekend Exhibit. She co-hosts the Sistematic podcast with her sister, Alexis, and covers topics of pop culture, art, music, and fashion.
Alexis is a 2021 Master of Public Policy candidate at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. She serves as Co-Chair of the Association of Latinx Students for Social Justice and also sits on the Housing Committee for the Puerto Rican Agenda. She covers political topics alongside her sister on Sistematic.
Alexis and Samantha are unapologetically themselves, and shed a light on topics that affect their communities and highlight people who embody what it is to be a true boss. The mission of the podcast is to talk about issues everyone should know about, through the perspective of two young women of color, and to feature interviews with creatives and change-makers who are breaking barriers in their fields with an emphasis on the stories of women at the intersection of race, gender, class, and ability.
This article was originally published in 2019 and has since been updated. Do you know of an influential Chicago Latina that should profile? Let us know
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