Valdés, M. Isabel

Isabel Valdés

Isabel Valdés is known as a visionary marketer and consumer insights expert; She popularized integrated multicultural marketing through “In-culture marketing” and “Marketing for Share of Heart,” that are gold standards in business and marketing today.  She is passionate and committed to bring Hispanic marketing to corporate America and to bring Corporate America to the Hispanic community!

An accomplished entrepreneur, she founded Hispanic Market Connections, Inc., an award winning marketing research and consulting company which was sold and publicly traded in 1998. Presently she heads IVC, In-Culture Marketing, Transforming Heart Shares into Market Shares™, a strategic marketing consultancy. Presently she is a member of PepsiCo and Frito-Lay’s Ethnic Advisory Board and heads its Human Sustainability Committee.

An active community leader she has served as trustee on several national and regional Hispanic community organization boards,  including, NCLR, (The National Council of La Raza,) D.C., The National Hispana Leadership Institute, (D.C.) The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, LA and presently she co-chairs the Mexican Heritage Corporation, in San Jose.

She has received numerous honors and awards, including being selected by Fortune Small Business as a “Woman Entrepreneur Star,” and “Business Woman of the Year” by the New York Hispanic Chambers of Commerce. She was named “21^st Century Star of Multicultural Research” by American Demographics magazine.

A frequent guest speaker at trade conferences, C-Suites, and universities, for almost a decade she was a lecturer at the Summer Executive Communications Series and the Business School at Stanford University, her Alma Mater.

She is the author of five books--The Hispanic Market Handbook (1995, Gale Research Publishers), Marketing to American Latinos, A Guide to the In-culture Approach, Part 1, released in 2000 and Part 2, released in 2002 (Paramount Market Publishing), and Hispanic Customers for Life, A Fresh Look at Acculturation (2008, Paramount Market Publishing).

Win the Hispanic Market:Strategies for Business Growth (Paramount Market Publishing, 2012) is her fifth book and her first as an editor.

She earned an M.A. in Communications Research and an M.A. in Education from Stanford University. She also holds professional degrees in Communications Arts and Advertising from two leading universities in South America. 

Ms. Valdés lives part-time in San Francisco and part-time in South America.