Chiqui Cartagena, Managing Director at Multicultural Communication at Meredith Integrated Marketing, is a media pioneer with 20 years of experience developing, contributing to and launching some of America’s most successful Spanish-language products. She is the former Business Development Director for the Ad Age Group, where she was in charge of growing the Custom Publishing unit and developed new business opportunities for the leading trade magazines Advertising Age and Creativity as well as AdAge.com, AdCritic.com and Madison+Vine.

Prior to working at Ad Age, Cartagena was the Senior Director of Club Musica Latina for Columbia House. In 1996 she was part of the team that developed and launched the Spanish version of People magazine. People en Español is still the most successful Spanish-language magazine and continues to dominate the Hispanic print market today. In 1998 Cartagena left Time, Inc. to become Executive Editor of the Spanish-language version of TV Guide. She has also worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, including Sesame Workshop, American Media, and the Magazine Publishers of America.

Having grown up in Madrid, Spain, Cartagena returned to the United States to study at the University of Miami, where she became a cum laude graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Latin American Studies in 1985. Cartagena has received many honors for her pioneering work in the Hispanic marketing, including a Silver Award in the Documentary section of the Chicago International Film Festival (1995), for her film Sis: The Perry Watkins Story; Woman of the Year honor (1998) from El Diario/La Prensa and a Special Achievement Award (2003) from the United States Postal Service for her work in Direct Marketing to Hispanics.

Cartagena is also student of Sanskrit and a practitioner of Yoga. She has been active in the gay and lesbian community, having served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD for five years and prior to that was Chairman of the Board of the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, now known as the New Festival. A current member of AWNY (Advertising Women of New York), MYWIFT (New York Women in Film and Television), and the Astraea Foundation, Cartagena has also continued her association with the National Hispanic Journalists Association, the Direct Marketing Association, and the New York Advertising and Communication Network.

Cartagena is the author of Latino Boom! What Every Business Needs to Know About the U.S. Hispanic Market, a business book that is published by Random House.

Journalism,