- [Narrator] Funding for this episode of Que Pasa NJ with Carlos Medina, has been provided by horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, P-S-E-N-G, PNC Bank.

The Engineers Labor-Employer Cooperative 825, R-O-I NJ Business Magazine, Hackensack Meridian Health.

- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode three of Que Pasa.

Today you're lucky to have Sonia Sroka of Meta Facebook.

Gus Penaranda, the Executive Director of the Pride Chamber of Commerce.

Sophia Angelica, singer and songwriter with a message.

And Claudia Romo Edelman, Founder and Executive Chairwoman of the We Are All Human Foundation.

And ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, Que Pasa.

(upbeat music) And first up we have Sonia Sroka of Meta Facebook.

Welcome to Que Pasa Sonia.

- I'm so excited to be here, Carlos, thank you for having me.

- All the way from California.

- That's right, all the way from Menlo Park, where Meta's headquarter.

- Tell me a little bit about your family's immigration story to the United States.

- Well, so Carlos, I was born and raised in El Salvador.

And we immigrated here in the nineties.

Just like so many other people came to the United States at that time.

And yeah, so it's been quite a journey from El Salvador to the many places within the United States that I lived, including New York city, which was the place where my kids were born.

And then moving back to Silicon Valley and then working for Meta.

- Now I know Meta does a lot of surveys.

I know Meta has done a lot with small business.

Tell me about the most recent survey that they did around small business issues.

- Yeah, at Meta small businesses are so important to us.

Because we recognize that small businesses, especially during the pandemic and after the pandemic, they need so much support.

And so we were there to help people, to give them the tools to be able to continue their business.

And so what we're seeing now in our recent report, is that businesses are picking up again.

I think we all see it in our everyday life.

Things are slowly and somewhat faster getting back to normal.

And so what we're seeing is that small businesses as well are getting back to normal.

We do see that obviously small businesses owned by minorities, whether it's Latinos or black owned small businesses have suffered the most, unfortunately, but are also the most resilient.

Women owned businesses are the most adaptable and resilient.

So those are the things that we're seeing.

And that's why we're here to be able to provide the tools for people to leverage them, use them and put their businesses to work.

- Sure, you use that word resiliency, which I see a lot in the small business community, especially in the Tri-State area.

Tell me about the program called Elevate that meta Facebook has put out there.

- This is a program that was specifically designed to help small businesses owned by Latinos and by African Americans.

And it's a program that really coaches, teaches, and actually we have Elevate circles, Facebook circles, where Facebook employees partner with small business owners to help them, to be able to be there for them and give them the tools that they need in order for them to thrive within their digital ecosystem.

We have so many different tools that are free.

It's just a matter of figuring it out how to get access to them.

And that's part of why I'm so happy to be here.

And it's part of my job to be able to help people access information.

- Sonia, I know it for my involvement with the chamber, you know it, women owned businesses, Latina businesses are growing at a crazy pace.

What did the survey reveal about women owned businesses?

- Meta survey revealed that women own businesses are thriving.

Specifically this year, we see them being more resilient.

One of the things that we see about women own businesses, is the adaptability.

They'll be able to adapt to any circumstance that is happening.

That's something that we see that's slightly different than other businesses.

So one of the great things about meta and our products, is that you can communicate directly with people.

If you're on Facebook, or if you're on Instagram, or wherever you are, or WhatsApp, however you communicate, people can have access to you and let you know exactly what they think of your product.

Or if they need something, you can have an exchange.

And that way that helps you improve either your product, your services, and that allows for you to give people what they want.

- I would like to know a little bit about a project that was born right here in New York City or in the New York City area called Art of My Roots.

Can you tell me about that project that Meta is involved with.

- Yes, so the Art of My Roots is something I am super proud of.

Is something that was created out of our group on the multicultural side.

And it's a project and it's a program that really focuses on heritage, that focuses on culture.

And what the program is about is really showing how culture, how your heritage shows up, and how you are able to be you on the platform.

How that creates where you are, where you come from, who you are, really touches, everything that you do, and really shows up.

So one of the things we wanted to do is between creators on our platforms, showing up as themselves and being influenced by their culture.

And then between spaces, that we know that people were not able to visit, especially at that time because of COVID, we thought, what can we do to bring to people culture?

And so we partner with museums around the country to be able to through AR, which is augmented reality, which is also part of the Metaverse.

We partner with them to bring this effects so that people at home can enjoy the museums.

So many museums are independent owned, they're not necessarily having all these funds and then they weren't having traffic or they weren't having people visit them.

But with this, it was a chance for them to be out there, to share what they have with the public.

So it was actually a really wonderful program that we have continued throughout this year as well.

- I have a last question for you.

We're dealing with a new cycle of misinformation.

Social media has a lot of misinformation.

How is Facebook Meta combating that misinformation, especially prior to elections?

And I would say minority communities might be more susceptible, 'cause they're the way they're digesting their information, a lot is on social media.

I know Hispanics over index on the use of social media, and smartphones as a way of where they obtain their news.

What is the company doing to combat that?

- Misinformation is something that is out there, and we take this very, very seriously.

And I've been doing a lot of work with the teams on misinformation.

and specifically some of the work that we just released recently is a bot specifically to help misinformation on WhatsApp.

And one of the things that we have done is created a partnership specifically, as you said, for example, for the Latino community, for the Hispanic community, to be able to have fact checking on different storylines or anything that they see, so that they don't immediately believe what they're reading.

They can fact check it.

So we have a partnership with Univision and Telemundo, and they are going to do the fact checking for us.

So what happens is that in this partnership, we have a phone number that's gonna appear on your screen and you can add this phone number to your contacts on WhatsApp.

And you can actually text the phone number and ask any questions that you want.

You will immediately get a response, a bot will respond.

If it's something that's a question that's a little deeper or something that is a little bit less commonly asked, then you're gonna have a real person look into it and get back to you.

So this is something new that we just launched like two weeks ago, to continue to help us on the misinformation fight, which to us is something that we take very seriously.

- That's great.

Well, Sonia, thanks for joining us and keep doing the good work that you're doing at Meta.

- It has been a pleasure to be here with you, Carlos.

I know that we've done other interviews before, but I'm so happy to be here in person in your studio.

So thank you for having me.

- And up next, we have Gus Penaranda, the new Executive Director of the Pride Chamber of Commerce.

(upbeat music) Welcome back, up next we have Gus Penaranda, the Executive Director of the Pride Chamber of Commerce.

Welcome to Que Pasa Gus.

- Yes, thank you.

Thank you for having me Carlos.

- Tell me a little bit about the rebranding.

- So before I came on board, the New Jersey Pride Chamber of Commerce, as it's now called, was called the New Jersey LGBT Chamber.

The needs of the members had changed.

So they spent 2021 during the tail end of the pandemic rebranding.

When I came on board, the 1st of January was unsure how it would come across.

But since our first event in February, it's just been shooting into the stars.

- That's great, how many members approximately do you guys have?

- So when I walked in, we were at about 113.

So we're now what, a hundred days or so into the year, we're over 200.

- That's great.

- Over 200 members.

And it's basically, people are reacting to the change.

They're like they see the energy, and the community is, is absorbing it up.

- I know with the Hispanic Chamber, there's national chambers, is there a national chamber and are the names... Has there been rebranding on a national level or is it still the LBGT National his Chamber?

- So they are the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

- Okay.

- Which yes, they are the certifying body to all the satellite chambers, like the New Jersey satellite.

But there's about 52 of us throughout the United States.

The national chamber has greater success in having a lot of the fortune 500 companies as members, but it's the services they provide all of the satellite chambers.

Meaning networking events, access to directories, resources, training, education, that's all dispersed throughout the different chambers, such as what we're doing with Google.

There's a lot of resources there, and of course they're the certifying body for us.

But we're hoping to change that in the state soon with the signing of the executive order, that now recognize LGBT owned businesses in the state of New Jersey as women and minority own are recognized in the state.

So it provides more equitable access to contracts and to funding in some cases.

- That was recently signed by the governor?

- Yes, recently signed by the governor.

- Excellent.

- He's done a lot for the community, from protecting marriage equality now to recognizing LGBT owned businesses.

So he is clearly and his administration are sending a message that LGBT owned businesses, LGBT allies, or people that just want to work in a very diverse business community, you wanna come to New Jersey.

- Gus, tell me a little bit about your family's immigration story.

I know you came from Peru, the founder of the Hispanic chamber, Dr. Daniel Hudos.

A legend and the Peruvian community.

Talk to me a little bit about that journey.

- My parents are from Peru, both immigrants.

My mom was a nanny and she came through... What used to happen back then is they had a nanny program where people would come from south America to the United States as nannies, and they would attend school and they would work toward their citizenship.

And my father was a professional soccer player.

So he played professional soccer back in the 1940s before soccer became anything in the United States, as it is now.

And the story is that their lives brought them to the United States.

My father being recruited by club Roma, which was and still based in the city of Patterson.

Which was the center of everything soccer in the east coast for quite a period of time.

My mom came to Ridgewood, New Jersey first.

And then Patterson was the city where everyone came.

And the jobs were there.

And they met at, I guess back then it was called a social.

Because the Hispanic community, when you know that your cousin or a friend you went to school with is living in America and they're in the same town, they all get together.

And they cook the food, they talk about what their experience is, and how they can help each other, and that's how they met.

They lived their lives.

My twin sisters and myself, we all benefited.

Because they were very focused on getting us educated, but they pushed us into public education.

And we all went to college and we've all been able to succeed in our careers.

And we know that they were happy with their parenting skills.

- And that's great.

Thank you for joining us.

Know your chamber has an ally in me and in our chamber.

And anything you need, thanks for joining us on Que Pasa.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- Up next, we have Sophia Angelica, singer and songwriter.

She uses her music to tell a message.

(upbeat music) Welcome back to Que Pasa.

And up next, we have Sophia Angelica.

Thank you for joining us, Sophia.

- Thank you, Carlos Medina.

- Tell me your family's immigration story from Argentina.

- Well, my grandmother, she was born in Rosario in Argentina.

But she actually moved to Mexico, I believe when she was around 16 or 17 and she lived in Mexico for 20 years.

So if anything, she's more Mexicana than Argentina.

But she moved to New York after that.

And that's when my mother was born in New York.

And I was born in New York too, in Queens.

But even though we're New York girls, we're also very Latina.

Because we grew up in a very Latino community.

So if anything, my accent in Spanish sounds like Puerto Rican, Cuban, Argentinian, Colombian.

- Sure.

- All of the different cultures, but we grew up with the Latino community.

Specifically the Latino theater community surrounding us and the arts community.

- She's a singer songwriter.

And I've seen the one headline that I like is, Music With a Message.

Tell me about the message and what inspires you to deliver that message through that means of music.

- Well, since I was little, I noticed that a lot of my songs that I had written had some kind of message attached to it.

Whether it be about bullying or about something personal going on.

But something inspirational in a way.

At around 12 years old, I got involved with the United nations through a family friend of ours.

And from there, it was a snowball effect of getting to know different organizations and performing at different conferences at the UN and different events involving social causes.

And I got inspired to connect my music to anti-bullying, anti-discrimination since I'm Latina.

And because of all the stereotypes that exist.

And as well as human rights, and got involved with many organizations, including youth for human rights international, which sent me on a university tour throughout Taiwan to talk about human rights and music.

And how music can have that power to change a life or change a community.

I got inspired to really use music to be that power to make kids feel better as well.

Or just to inspire them and say, "Hey, you're not alone."

And I got to see firsthand how music has this power to change a mentality or change life.

- Sure.

- It was inspiring for me to see how music can have that power.

- Tell me about a song you wrote for your brother.

- So I wrote a song called "My Brother, Big Brother."

And released it as part of a national campaign to help find him a kidney donor.

Because unfortunately, if he was on a list, he would've to wait eight, nine years to get a kidney and would be on dialysis for all that time.

And luckily a year and a half later, because of that campaign and because of Facebook, he was able to get that lifesaving kidney in Florida.

Actually, - That's great.

- we lived there for two months and everything, but that's really where I saw how music can really reach hearts, can reach different countries, can reach different communities to really make something happen in a way.

- Tell me, do you have any gigs coming up in New York?

I know I've seen you advertising that you were performing in various different venues, I believe.

- Yeah, so I'm performing actually at Rockwood Music Hall on June 7th at 9:00 PM.

People can find their tickets through my social media and @SophiaAngelicaMusic.

But I'm doing these performances and doing these kind of mini tours around the city, because I released two pop singles about a couple months ago, two or three months ago, on 222-22, called "Here I Am."

- Excellent.

- And "Que Sería De Mi," one in English and one in Spanish to kind of support both sides of me and represent that.

And one of them is this like really tropical fun song that we filmed the music video in Puerto Rico.

- Nice.

- And "Que Sería De Mi," and the other one, there's a dance involved with it.

And it's empowering and it's kind of an empowering pop ballad in a way.

So I've been singing those two songs a lot throughout the city, as well as some other songs that I'll be releasing soon and some covers as well, of course.

- Great.

Well, Sophia, thank you for all you do.

Kudos on the awards that you've won and all the good messaging that you're sending out there.

Thank you for joining Que Pasa.

- No, thank you so much for the wonderful invitation.

- Thanks.

- And up next, we have Claudia Romo Edelman, Founder and Chairperson of the, We are All Human Foundation.

(upbeat music) Welcome back, now we have Claudia Romo Edelman.

She's the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of the We are All Human Foundation.

Welcome to Que Pasa, Claudia.

- Thank you so very much for having me.

- Tell me about your immigration story.

I know you lived in Europe for many years, You speak six languages.

- I globally my entire life multi lateral affairs, 25 years in Europe, work brought me to New York.

I was working for the Secretary General of the United Nations in the launching the sustainable development goals.

That master plan for the future of the people on the planet.

And I moved to New York seven years ago, and that was the first ever time in my life that I heard that I was a Hispanic.

I never even knew that that existed.

I lived my entire life as a happy Mexican and I moved to New York and I was like, "What is this Hispanic thing?"

And the more I started digging into it, the more the data was like huge.

And I started looking at like, whoa, I'm gonna belong to the group that is bringing 12% of the salary for every American, wow.

Pretty much when I married an American four years ago, that I started thinking that this was really personal.

And that because of my choice to stay in America and in New York, because of my choice of marriage, my daughter was gonna be making 50% of the salary.

And that's really what triggered me to start looking at trying to solve this real enigma of the Latino community, because the reality is that we're huge, but we're seen as small.

So I started a couple of years ago, getting deeper into understanding the Latino community and what are the barriers, the real barriers, the artificial barriers that can get us to a place where everybody can be seeing her and valued.

So that my daughter has the same chance that she would have to make the salary she deserves for the profession she chooses to have.

- Now was that the impetus for the, We are All Human Foundation?

- The We are All Human foundation was a result of... Like again, working for the secretary general of the United nations and being a marketer, I had access to all the data of all the world.

And the reality is that the data indicates the world is getting better.

The pace of progress is not as fast as we wanted, but the world is making progress and we're getting better.

And nevertheless, there was one piece or two pieces of red flag that started pumping up from the data.

And one of them, a part of climate change was that divisiveness was growing and was getting by far more traction.

So I started seeing racism and discrimination grow in a much faster pace than anything else.

So we set up, We are All human, as a way to remind people that just of that, that we are all human.

That we belong to the same human family and that what happens to one affects the others.

That there's no such a thing as the otherness, that like when all of us sudden you think like, whoa, who are you, and why do you look so different than me?

And you don't have the same access to the things that like access to education or health.

'Cause that could really stop the progress that we have as a humanity.

So I started world human with that one intention, supported by 20 United Nations Agencies to create content and community, to create a sense of pretty much a sense of humanity, a sense of social justice.

And that really led me to start looking at the racism and the lack of opportunities that we have also as a community.

- So Hispanic star initiative is part of the, We are All Human Foundation.

Is that a pillar or- - It is an initiative.

- Okay.

- Think of it this way, all the experience that I had for the last 25 years, looking at global frameworks and how like the world gets together to put master plans like the sustainable development goals.

I'm using that to create and understand what are the real issues that we have.

Well, we understand that we need better education, better health, better jobs, and better gender equality, for sure.

But the reality is that there are other barriers in front of us that we can tackle immediately today, this generation.

And actually that's probably our job to become and accept our calling to be the transition generation.

And there are two things that we have to finish in this generation.

One is unify, we're so fragmented.

Mexicans, don't talk to Colombians, Venezuela, and for generation, seconds, the language, the Brazilians, it is bananas.

The amount of fragmentation we have, which we're very much scarcity mentality.

And we elbow each other all the time.

And the second thing I think that need to do is to mobilize the partners that we need to help us get where we are.

So what we're doing with Hispanic star, is that idea that when you see it like the rainbow or the rings of the Olympics, you're like, "That's good for Latinos."

It's Latino, unity and Latino pride.

But also a framework of action to unify us and mobilize partners like corporate America.

So since we launched Hispanic star two years ago, we've been able to align 100 Latino organizations that represent 10 million Latinos.

Mobilize 300 companies representing pretty much like 50 fortune 500 companies.

We have set up 30 Hispanic star hopes all across the country with one single goal, unify each other, support each other, mentor each other, open the doors for each other, give businesses to each other.

So I think that it is very important for us to realize that united we're strong, fragmented we're not.

And that we have all the conditions are giving for us to win this battle.

And that we have other examples of other communities in our lifetime have made it to the other side.

So I think it is our time.

I think that it is a breakthrough moment.

And I'm excited actually to come to places and realize that more and more people like you and are ready.

- Yeah, like what you're saying, because it's not about philanthropy, it's about smart business for these companies.

- Oh, absolutely.

- And it's a struggle that I have, but again, when you lead with numbers and facts, it's harder to dispute that.

- Right, and we just need to make sure that we join forces in doing that.

That's why I love what you have here.

Roberto Clemente, Celia Cruz, Hispanic star is doing partnership with McMillan to launch a series of children's books so that our children have heroes.

And starting with Roberto Clemente so that if you can see it, you can be it.

So whenever someone in the street thinks of Latino, the natural association is negative.

And we have to turn it into positive.

Or we are invisible and we have to move the needle to visible.

We have to make a transformation from being seen as takers to being seen as makers.

Because the reality is that we've been stars all along.

We just had a huge cloud in front of us, not letting other people see how we shine.

And I think that that's what gets me excited that I see more and more people joining forces to remove that cloud.

So that more and more Hispanics can start shining along.

- Thank you for everything you do Claudia and thank you for joining us on Que Pasa.

- Thank you so very much to you and bringing the voices of Latino community, yes.

- Thank you for joining us today, Claudia.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's a wrap.

Thank you for joining us for the latest episode, three of Que Pasa.

We had people from Facebook Meta, and inspirational stories and the power of the Hispanic market.

And don't forget Que Pasa.

- [Narrator] Funding for this episode of Que Pasa NJ with Carlos Medina, has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, P-S-E-N-G, PNC Bank.

The Engineer's Labor-Employer Cooperative 825, R-O-I NJ Business Magazine, Hackensack Meridian Health.

This has been a production of the Modesto Educational Foundation.

(upbeat music)