February 18, 2016 — Chicago, Illinois
AJC Chief Executive Officer David Harris will be a featured speaker at the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI) annual conference luncheon on February 20.
The USHLI conference, the largest Latino leadership gathering in the country, promotes leadership development, education and Latino unity. More than 1,600 participants are expected to attend.
“The historically strong Latino-Jewish relationship, founded on our shared histories and aspirations, is a model for intergroup cooperation that underlies, indeed strengthens, America’s democratic and pluralistic society,” said Harris.
As head of AJC since 1990, Harris has initiated pioneering programs to engage with Latino communities across the U.S. Creation of AJC’s Latino and Latin American Affairs Institute in 2005, led by Dina Siegel Vann, its founding director, firmly established AJC’s leading role in promoting Latino-Jewish relations in the U.S.
Siegel Vann will accompany Harris to the conference. AJC Chicago lay and staff leaders will also be in attendance.
The close relationship between AJC and USHLI spans decades. USHLI President Dr. Juan Andrade, Jr., was one of the first U.S. Latino leaders to visit Israel on an AJC Project Interchange (PI) educational seminar. Many of the more than 300 Latino leaders who participated in PI seminars gathered in Washington for a reunion in 2014.
In 2012, Harris, together with USHLI Board Member Henry Cisneros, led a joint delegation of AJC and Latino leaders to Mexico to meet with incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and other senior officials. Cisneros, chairman and CEO of CityView, is a former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration and Mayor of San Antonio. At last year’s USHLI conference, Harris and Cisneros discussed the state of Latino–Jewish relations in the U.S.
AJC helped to launch the bipartisan Latino-Jewish Congressional Caucus five years ago to further collaborative engagement between U.S. Latino and Jewish Members of Congress on domestic and foreign policy issues.
And, in cooperation with Latino Decisions, AJC conducted a landmark -- and pioneering -- national survey of American Hispanic attitudes toward Jews in 2012.
