Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Community Partners, I am honored to be a featured speaker at the 2026 Latina Expo San Diego, taking place July 24, 2026, at the Marina Village Conference Center located at 1936 Quivira Way, San Diego, CA, and I would love for you to join me for this inspiring event celebrating leadership, entrepreneurship, health, business, education, and the incredible power of women. Latina Expo is more than an event—it is a movement that brings together entrepreneurs, professionals, business owners, nonprofit organizations, healthcare leaders, students, families, and community changemakers to learn, connect, grow, and create lasting opportunities. Whether you are looking to expand your business, reach new customers, network with influential leaders, discover valuable resources, or simply be inspired, Latina Expo offers something for everyone. As my special guest, I am pleased to offer you these exclusive savings: Exclusive Speaker Offer • $50 OFF any Exhibitor Booth – Showcase your business or organization and connect with thousands of attendees. • $5 OFF any General Admission Ticket – Simply enter the promotional code Women26 at checkout. • Special Discounts on Tables of Eight – Gather your friends, colleagues, employees, or clients and enjoy special pricing while experiencing this incredible event together. I sincerely hope you will take advantage of these exclusive offers and join me as we celebrate the strength, resilience, innovation, and success of women from across our community. I look forward to seeing you at Latina Expo San Diego and sharing this unforgettable experience with you. Warm regards, Hilda Soto Featured Speaker 2026 Latina Expo San Diego

Excited to see this space open up. Here's my offer to the community. I work with founders on something most people don't talk about in the early stages. Not the product, pitch, or the funding strategy. The stuff that's quietly slowing you down underneath all of that. The belief you haven't named yet. The pattern you keep repeating without realizing it. The thing that's costing you more than any operational problem is. What makes this conversation different is that I look at both sides. I've worked in operations and done the identity work myself as a founder, including building a business that collapsed when I tried to step away from it. That experience taught me the difference between fixing the surface and fixing the root. I rebuilt with that understanding and now I help other founders find that same clarity before it costs them what it cost me. My offer here is simple. A free 30 minute conversation where I help you understand whether operational fixes will solve what's blocking you, or whether the root cause requires something else entirely. You leave knowing one to three things that may be quietly working against you right now, things you might not even realize are there. No pitch. No agenda. Just clarity. If that sounds useful, drop a comment or DM me directly and we'll coordinate a time. =)

For decades, we’ve celebrated individual Latino entrepreneurial success stories. Those stories matter. But they are not enough. If we’re serious about transforming the economic future of our community, we need to think beyond individual startups and begin building national entrepreneurial infrastructure. The United States has countless organizations doing incredible work to support Latino entrepreneurs. Incubators. Accelerators. Universities. Chambers. Nonprofits. Investors. Corporate initiatives. Yet our efforts remain fragmented. Imagine what would happen if we aligned around one ambitious national objective: Create 100,000 new Latino startups. Not because it’s a nice round number. Because startups create jobs. They commercialize innovation. They generate wealth. They solve problems. They become the next generation of employers, investors, mentors, and community leaders. The Latino community is one of the fastest-growing economic forces in America, yet we continue to underinvest in the very engine that creates long-term prosperity: entrepreneurship. This moment demands something bigger than another program. It demands a national movement. One that connects ecosystems instead of competing with them. One that shares knowledge instead of protecting it. One that leverages AI, education, capital, mentorship, and collective intelligence to help thousands more founders move from idea to company. The question isn’t whether Latinos have the talent. We do. The question is whether we have the courage to organize at a scale we’ve never attempted before. I believe we do. The future of the American economy will be built by entrepreneurs. Let’s make sure 100,000 more of them are Latino. #TheLatinoStartup #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #EconomicDevelopment #LatinoLeadership #Startups #AI #FounderEconomy #CollectiveImpact

This Wednesday I’m joining Ruby Garcia and Dr. Michal Tapia from Latino AI Summit for a live conversation on what actually separates founders who are AI curious from founders who are AI ready. For a lot of us building without a big team or big budget, AI isn’t optional anymore, it’s leverage. But most founders I talk to are stuck at “I asked ChatGPT one question and it was cool” instead of having it built into how they run the business day to day. We’re talking about that gap directly. Real habits, not hype. Wednesday, July 8, 10am PT on LinkedIn Live. https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:7478923511370178560

Recently, I attended a First-Generation College Program designed to help channel some of the brightest young minds into higher education. As I often do, I spoke one-on-one with over 40 students and asked a simple question: had anyone ever told them they could also become entrepreneurs? The answer was consistent—and unsurprising. Nearly all of them said no. No one had encouraged them to explore, imagine, or pursue a path where they could be the CEO or founder of their own company. We prepare young people for employment. We should also prepare them for ownership. This is not a criticism of jobs. Jobs matter. Teachers matter. Professionals matter. But if entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful drivers of innovation, economic mobility, and wealth creation, why is it still treated as an elective rather than a foundational life skill? Today, we guide millions of young people toward becoming excellent employees. We spend years teaching them how to earn a paycheck. But how much time do we spend teaching them how to create one? Imagine if every high school graduate understood how to identify problems, validate ideas, build a business model, leverage AI to launch a company, raise capital, and lead a team. How many more innovators would emerge? How many more communities would generate their own opportunities? How many more young people would realize they are capable of building something extraordinary? This is not an argument against employment. It is an argument for expanding possibility. Every young person should graduate knowing they have two legitimate paths: To build someone else’s vision. Or to build one of their own. The future requires both. Yet today, we overwhelmingly prepare for only one. That must change. Not because every student should become an entrepreneur, but because every student deserves the chance to discover whether they could be one. The future is not inherited. It is constructed. Let’s start teaching our young people how to build it.