Jacqueline Hernandez is the daughter of two Spanish immigrants, and those roots are what have driven her through her career in media and to this day, as the founder of her own digital marketing and business consulting company, New Majority Ready.

The company works with businesses and brands to prepare them for the new multicultural world where their products and services will compete. A large portion of that new, multicultural world will also be Hispanic, which is right in Hernandez’s wheelhouse, and sits at the crux of her passion for media.

“The power to inform, entertain and enrich people’s lives is what really drove me to wanting to be in media when I first started my career,” Hernandez said in her acceptance speech as AL DÍA’s Media Archetype at this year’s Hispanic Heritage Archetypes Gala. “Throughout the years, it has been something I’ve just always wanted to do with the lens of: ‘How do I do that and really represent this Hispanic community that I’m so passionate about?’”    

That passion is also what sits at the base of Hernandez’s recognition as AL DÍA’s Media Archetype, and she continued in her speech at the gala to tell how they tie into what she called the “big highlight” of her life and career.

“To properly represent Hispanics in media, and to also promote the power that our community has economically, socially, in pop culture, politically, literally across the board,” said Hernandez in her acceptance speech.

She’s done just that at TIME Magazine, CNN, People Magazine, Telemundo and NBCUniversal, and now as a recent addition to the board of Victoria’s Secret.

But still, the Hispanic power remains mostly untapped. 

In her acceptance speech, Hernandez also cited a statistic that is sure to become a mainstay in boardrooms across the country — that U.S. Latinos represent the fifth-largest GDP in the world. It’s also one often pushed by L’Attitude Founder Sol Trujillo in his constant uplift of U.S. Latino economic power.

For Hernandez, the stat is “tremendous,” but one that continues to push her to pursue new heights in the future.

“Being able to represent the power of what this community is and will continue to be, is what has always fueled me,” she said.