Cristina Benitez

For two decades, Cristina Benitez has developed a wide range of branding and marketing programs that target the growing Latino population in the United States. In 1998, she founded Lazos Latinos, a specialty Hispanic strategic branding and advertising company based in Chicago. Lazos Latinos’ mission is to build leadership brands by embracing, understand, and respecting the Latino consumer.

As a senior vice president of ethnic marketing at DraftWorldwide, Cristina directed Hispanic direct marketing campaigns and spearheaded Dimension Draft, the agency’s nationally recognized study on Hispanics and direct marketing. At FOVA, Grey Advertising’s Hispanic marketing group, she served as vice president of account services.

Cristina is a board member of the Gateway Foundation, The Chicago Public Library, The Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement, Luna Negra Dance, and serves on the audience development and diversity committee of the Museum of Contemporary Art. She served on the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois, the Lt. Governor’s Ethnic Advisory Council, and the Advisory Council of the Women’s Business Development Center.

She is former vice chairman of Directo, the Hispanic Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association, and a member of the American Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. She has taught courses on Hispanic marketing at the Instituto Cervantes in Chicago and is a mentor to Latino youth for the Youth Economic Empowerment Initiative.

Latinization: How Latino Culture is Transforming the U.S., is available from PMP.

Contact the author
phone: (312) 280-1224
email: cbenitez@lazoslatinos.com
website: www.lazoslatinos.com