CHCC Board Member Anna Sauceda, CHCC President and CEO Alice Perez, President and CEO Martha de la Torre, CHCC Board Member Connie Perez
Owner and CEO of EC Hispanic Media, Martha de la Torre, is recognized by the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, with an award that exemplifies her 26 years of effort helping the Hispanic community.
Orange Grove, CA – August 15, 2014 – Congratulations are in order today as Martha De La Torre, CEO and co-founder of EC Hispanic Media, won the 2014 Latina Business Woman of the Year Award for the state of California, announced on August 12th at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Orange County. The award, presented by the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce who represents over 700,000 Hispanic Businesses, signifies a major achievement for Martha and EC Hispanic Media as California’s over 14 million Latino population is projected to surpass the Caucasian, Non-Hispanic population this year and become the largest single race/ethnic group in the state.
Martha doesn’t have a conventional business success story. After initially wanting to pursue a career in dance choreography, her business acumen began to develop and pushed her to study accounting at LMU. After graduating, she landed a job at Arthur Young & Company where she became a Certified Public Accountant and Audit Manager specializing in financial institutions. However, her most relevant experience with her first post-study career developed as she also assisted businesses in the emerging Hispanic market. This experience also helped her recognize the need for more accessible Spanish language content in Los Angeles and fueled her fire to embark on starting her own Hispanic enterprise.
Often calling herself “the reluctant entrepreneur”, Martha had initially hoped someone else would see the promise in her business plan and would want to develop the organization themselves. Not finding many interested parties, she and her husband Joe Badame co-founded the company in 1988. They made significant changes to how the company was run as they struggled to keep the company afloat during the recession of the ‘90s, and persevered through all the difficulties of launching a start-up to make EC Hispanic Media a profitable business with annual revenues in excess of $20 million today.
Most well-known for El Clasificado, the leading weekly Spanish-language shopper and online marketplace in the country, EC Hispanic Media aims to help sellers of various products and services reach the growing and diverse Hispanic population. In addition to the success of El Clasificado, the company also includes Quinceanera.com, Al Borde, Pacoslist.com, and Su Socio de Negocios, among its successful brands while also holding and participating in more than 20 events each month to outreach and engage with all segments of the Latino community. Last year, El Clasificado celebrated a milestone, 25 years of business and with it, the huge success of the multi-brand company.
However, the story doesn’t end here. With the constant advancement of technology and the online world, the only way for businesses to survive is to change and advance also and Martha is excited to see EC Hispanic Media continue conquering the digital world on new platforms as Latinos increase their use of mobile and tablet devices. This is an attribute that has lead Martha to have such huge success so far and why the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has awarded her the recognition of 2014 Latina Business Woman of the Year.
Please congratulate Martha on winning the 2014 Latina Business Woman of the Year presented by the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on social media:
Facebook: /MarthaDeLaTorre
Twitter: @mcdelaTorre
#WedoItInSpanish
MEDIA RESOURCES: Facebook.com/ECHispanic, Twitter.com/ECHispanicMedia, Plus.google.com/+Echispanicmedia, Youtube.com/ECHispanicMedia.com
