Mario Salinas Email & Phone Number

“Anyone pondering the future of the Latino vote in the USA – in this election or those to come – should meet Mario Salinas.” – USA Today, October 24, 2016Mario Salinas, Manager for the historic Leonel Castillo Community Center in Northside, within Harris County Precinct 2, former Community Partner for Houston in Action - which is made up for 40+ non profit organizations that do civic engagement work - and former Texas Deputy Director for Mi Familia Vota, is a proud fourth generation Harris County resident. He chairs the Latino Initiatives Advisory Committee for the Holocaust Museum Houston, is President of Latino Giving Houston and was the recipient of a 2018 Comcast Hispanic Hero Award. Mr. Salinas is engaged daily in making the communities he calls home the best they can be, now and in the future. Mr. Salinas became a full-time community organizer in early 2014, as much attention is focused on the Texas Latino population and the impact that growing community has in statewide elections and policy, now and in the coming decades. As the political parties court young Texas Latinos with bated breath, Mr. Salinas believes the message needs to be relayed from Latinos to policymakers that issues like the stereotyping of immigrants have real-world, daily consequences and that Texas Latinos will not stand by while we are scapegoated, or taken for granted. With the majority of Texas youth being Latino, the importance of establishing the positive habit of civic engagement early on needs to be relayed far and wide. An identity of empowerment needs to be adopted. To help meet this need, while at Mi Familia Vota, Mr. Salinas co-founded the Emerging Latino Leaders Fellowship, with Rice University student Daniel Cortez, a program focused on empowering high school and college students with civic leadership skills, which continues today. In 2016, as a volunteer deputy voter registrar, he was among the top 1% of volunteers registering people to vote in Harris County, the largest county in Texas, mainly through his unique presentations at area high schools and colleges.Mr. Salinas hopes to be an example to the communities that make up Harris County of how negative labels and lowered expectations are meant to be shattered while civic engagement and responsive local government can be tools of empowerment.

Listed skills include Fundraising, Community Outreach, Public Speaking, Nonprofits, and 40 others.

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  University Of Houston-Downtown

  Interdisciplinary Studies