Javier Palomarez

Javier Palomarez is the president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) in Washington, D.C., and one of the nation’s preeminent multicultural sales and marketing executives. He is a sought-after spokesperson, thought-leader, and strategist on the issues affecting America’s consumers, particularly those in the Hispanic community.

His opinions have appeared in leading media outlets, including NBC, ABC, Fox, Univision, Telemundo, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and USA Today, among many others. Palomarez is a seasoned public speaker, delivering numerous keynote speeches and panel discussions for some of the nation’s most influential institutions and conferences, including Republican National Conventions, Democratic National Conventions, The Atlantic, the Milken Institute, the George W. Bush Institute, Ernst & Young, and the Kauffman Foundation.

Palomarez was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Minority Business at the Department of Commerce and serves on the FCC Federal Advisory Committee on Diversity, the Comcast NBCUniversal Diversity Advisory Council, the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Advisory Board, the State Farm Bank CRA Advisory Council, the Board of Children’s Medical Center–Dallas, and the National 4-H Council Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Senate Task Force on Corporate Diversity and Inclusion and is a director of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR).

Palomarez was born in South Texas and raised by his mother in a single-parent household. The youngest of 10 children, he spent his formative years as a migrant farm worker. Palomarez is the product of public schooling and learned English as a second language. As a former high school dropout, he obtained a GED and worked his way through college, graduating with a BA in finance and an MBA from The University of Texas-Pan American, which, along with The University of Texas at Brownsville, was a predecessor institution to The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Under Palomarez’s leadership, the USHCC has regained new life after being a month away from disappearing. Today, the USHCC has moved beyond rescue and is growing in stature along with the surge in Latino-owned businesses. Palomarez has taken on immigration reform, supporting legalization for its economic merits and pushing political campaigns to spend more dollars on Spanish-language media. He leads his organization’s annual legislative summit. He promotes prepaid payroll cards for employees and investment in high-quality communications networks for increasingly important mobile connectivity.

Palomarez accepted leadership of the USHCC with goals of strengthening its programs, improving its member satisfaction, and placing a renewed focus on the needs of America’s small and minority-owned enterprises. While the overall number of small businesses in the U.S. has declined in the last decade, Hispanic-owned businesses have doubled. Palomarez dedicates much of the USHCC’s work to promoting, assisting, and weighing in on potential legislation or government action on behalf of the 3.3 million Hispanic-owned businesses that contribute more than $486 billion to the American economy.