This is the fourth of a five-part series. Part one is here, part two is here, and part three is here.
Maria Padilla is Diverse Small Business Manager at the Greater Green Bay Chamber of Commerce. The role was created last year as the result of a partnership between the City of Green Bay and the Chamber intended to focus on the region’s minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned businesses, working to connect resources to businesses fostering a sustainable small business sector. Before joining the Chamber, she worked in finance for several years. She earned a degree in marketing from UW-Green Bay in 2019.
Mathias Lemos Castillo is the Board Chair of the Latino Professional Association of Greater Madison. After graduating from Edgewood in 2018, he worked as a personal banker at Associated Bank, then joined Local Voices Network as a community builder. He now runs his own leadership development consulting firm, MLC Consulting, and has worked with major organizations such as United Way of Dane County.
Abby Andrietsch is CEO of St. Augustine Preparatory Academy, a multi-denominational Christiaion 4K-12 school in Milwaukee. Prior to stepping into that role in 2019, Andrietsch was co-founder and executive director of education nonprofit Schools That Can Milwaukee, a position she held for eight years. She has also served in executive positions at Husco International and the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, and also holds Master’s degrees in Business and Education from Stanford University.
Megan Diaz-Ricks is Community Partnerships Director with Community Shares of Wisconsin where she works with the many corporate donors who help to impact the work of Community Shares’ 70 non- members. The daughter of Chicano migrant workers, Megan was born and raised in Madison and comes from a long lineage of activists and advocates. Megan attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a returning student with a young child and graduated with a degree in Sociology in 2018. Later that year she joined Common Wealth Development as Coordination of Care Specialist. The next year Megan was promoted to the role of Director of Economic Development, where she worked to support the Economic Development section of Common Wealth Development through the COVID-19 pandemic, and later to Director of Communications and Fund Development. This work helped her to be recognized as one of InBusiness Magazine’s 2021 cohort of 40 Under 40 Young Professionals in the greater Madison area.
Jose Villa is a commercial loan officer at Fox Communities Credit Union. Headquartered in Appleton, the credit union serves members from Green Bay to Oshkosh and Manitowoc to Clintonville. A native of Sturgeon Bay, Jose earned degrees from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and UW-Green Bay, and this spring completed his MBA through St. Norbert College. Villa has offered workshops to first-generation students at UWGB and recently joined the board of directors for Casa ALBA Melanie, where he had volunteered for years and started a financial literacy program. Villa also serves on the Green Bay Botanical Garden board and is an active member of the Latino Professional Association of Northeast Wisconsin. He was named one of Insight Magazine’s 40 Under 40 for 2023.
Cristina Carvajal is founder and executive director of Wisconsin EcoLatinos, a nonprofit organization founded in 2021 that works to mobilize Latinos in south central Wisconsin to protect the environment and advocate for environmental justice. A native of Colombia, Carvajal moved to the U.S. more than 25 years ago — first to the east coast, then to Janesville and Madison. Volunteering with environmental advocacy organizations while raising her children reignited a passion for Carvajal who has always considered herself an environmental activist. She serves on the Sustainable Madison Committee, Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc Committee and Wisconsin Environmental Equity Tool Advisory Committee. She earned a degree in petroleum engineering from the Universidad de América in Bogotá in 1994 and attended graduate courses at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Ana Berrios-Schroeder is a circuit court judge in Milwaukee County. She became the first Latina judge to serve Branch 13 in 2023 after more than 21 years as a family court commissioner. Ana was born and raised in Milwaukee, and is a lifelong resident, other than three years in Puerto Rico as a child and her years in law school in Madison. Berrios-Schroeder earned her bachelor’s degree from Marquette University in criminology, sociology and social philosophy with a minor in theology, her Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
April Leon is Nursing Education Manager at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay, where she leads the clinical nurse mentorship program and facilitates a graduate nurse residency program, which supports newly hired graduate nurses and assists them with the transition from student nurse to professional nurse. She recently helped develop a nursing leadership course on unconscious bias for her fellow Advocate Aurora team members and represents the organization in various Hispanic community initiatives. She earned an associates degree in nursing from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, a bachelor’s from UW-Green Bay and a master’s in nursing education from UW-Oshkosh.
Part Five coming tomorrow!
