LATINA Style Magazine Announces the 2007 LATINA Style 50

“LATINA Style Magazine proudly announces the LATINA Style 50 for 2007. Now in its 10th anniversary year, this annual evaluation will again set the standard for Corporate America’s sensitivity to Latinas’ needs and goals in the workplace and identify the corporations that are providing the best career opportunities for Latinas in the U.S. The LATINA Style 50 Report is the most respected evaluation of corporate America’s career development opportunities for Latinas. More than 1,000 of the most prominent corporations in the United States were included in the extensive search.

Companies responding to LATINA Style’s questionnaire are evaluated based on issues that LATINA Style readers identified as most important to them in the workplace. Among the principal areas of evaluation are: number of Latina executives, mentoring programs, Latina board members, educational opportunities, alternative work policies, dependent/child care support, employee benefits, women’s issues, job retraining, affinity groups and Hispanic relations. Evaluations for the 2007 annual report were based on 2006 data.

Robert E. Bard, President and CEO of LATINA Style Magazine, says, “Slowly but surely, Latinas are making progress in climbing the corporate ladder. However, we still have a long way to go to achieve parity. As the only national Latina publication focusing on the needs and aspirations of professional Latinas, we have a duty to keep Hispanic women informed about corporate America’s best employment practices. We have gone to great lengths to provide a reliable resource for Latinas to evaluate companies, so they can be confident that the 2007 LATINA Style 50 truly represents some of the best opportunities corporate America has to offer.”

The number of Hispanic working women in the U.S. workforce exceeds seven and a half million and the numbers continue to rise. LATINA Style 50 companies employ 4,662,500 employees, of those 306,169 are Latinas, representing 6.6% of the total workforce of all the selected companies.

The 2007 Company of the Year is Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo, Inc. It is a company that realizes the impact of diversity to the bottom line and the importance of creating an inclusive atmosphere in the workplace to fully unleash innovation and growth. “When you’re a woman or minority in the workplace, you are different and can’t hide that,” said PepsiCo Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi. “PepsiCo has enabled me to achieve a great deal, and in my current role, I feel part of my responsibility is to support and encourage others as they pursue their careers or life goals, whatever those might be.”

An annual awards ceremony honoring the LATINA Style 50 Companies will take place on February 7, 2008 during LATINA Style’s Diversity Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. For more information regarding the LATINA Style 50, please visit the magazine website at www.latinastyle.com.
Top 50 Companies:

Aetna Inc.
Aflac Incorporated
Alcatel-Lucent
Allstate Insurance Company
American Airlines
American Express Company
AT&T
Bank of America
BNSF Railways Company
Citigroup Inc.
Colgate-Palmolive Company
Comcast Corporation
Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.
Credit Suisse
Chrysler Corporation
Darden Restaurants
Fannie Mae
General Mills, Inc.
General Motors Corporation
HSBC-North America
IBM
JPMorgan Chase
Kellogg Company
Kraft Foods, Inc.
Liz Claiborne Inc.
Macy’s Inc
Marriott International, Inc.
MasterCard Worldwide
McDonald’s Corporation
Merrill Lynch
MGM Mirage
Morgan Stanley
New York Life Insurance Company
Northern Trust
PepsiCo, Inc. – Company of the Year 2007
Principal Financial Group
Procter & Gamble
Prudential Financial, Inc.
Qwest Communications Intl., Inc.
SODEXHO, INC.
Southern California Ediso
State Farm Mutual Insurance Companies
The Coca-Cola Company
Union Pacific Railroad Company
USAA
Verizon Communications, Inc.
Wachovia
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wells Fargo & Company
Xerox Corporation

Honorable Mention Companies:

Bausch & Lomb
Freddie Mac
Sprint Nextel Corporation
UnitedHealthcare, Inc.
United Technologies Corporation”

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