New York City, NY – HISPA(Hispanics Inspiring Students’ Performance and Achievement) and Columbia Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), with support from Columbia Journalism School and the Double Discovery Center at Columbia College, will host a day-long Youth Conference at Columbia University on Friday, October 7, coinciding with Hispanic Heritage Month.  
 
The conference will bring together Columbia SHPE members and HISPA volunteers—including members of ESPN’s Latino/Hispanic Employee Resource Group GOAL! and the Verizon Hispanic Support Organization (HSO)—to serve as role models to approximately 150 New York City middle- and high-school students.  Themed “Take Action! Achieve Your Dreams,” HISPA Youth Conferences emphasize the importance of high school and introduce students to potential future careers via a variety of STEM-focused hands-on workshops and inspirational speakers. This will be HISPA’s 20th Youth Conference to date, made possible by ESPN, HISPA Founding Partner in New York City, and Verizon HSO, event Co-host

Since 2006, HISPA has worked to unite Latino professionals and students in their local communities to share their educational and professional journeys and build the pipeline of Latinos in higher education.  In the years since, HISPA has extended its role model-based programming from New Jersey to Texas, New York City, and just last week to Florida.

“We are thrilled to be hosting our 20th Youth Conference, especially as it falls during Hispanic Heritage Month,” said Ivonne Díaz Claisse, founder and CEO of HISPA. “I cannot think of a better way to celebrate the accomplishments of thousands of Latinos and their commitments to inspire the youth.”  
 
One critical component of HISPA’s Youth Conferences are hands-on career exploration workshops, which this year will cover topics including data transmission, energy conversion, the Internet of Things, engineering and journalistic content development.  Students will also hear from keynote speaker, ESPN Deportes’ Vice President of Sales and Consumer Marketing Michelle Bella, who is responsible for marketing initiatives for all of ESPN Deportes’ platforms, including television, radio and print.  Bella has also held executive positions with Univision and NBC Universal’s Telemundo.  Students and volunteers will also enjoy an inspirational address by Joey Negrón of CoolSpeak and a panel of college students who will share their own journeys into Columbia University.  
 
HISPA Annual Partners are AT&T, Comcast, Educational Testing Service, ESPN, Verizon, Visa, and Southwest Airlines, HISPA’s official airline partner.  In addition to volunteers from partner companies, participants will represent organizations including: UPS Crecer, SHPE-NYC, JPMorgan Chase Adelante, and the Latino Employee Network (LEN) at Thomson Reuters