Negocios Now

www.negociosnow.com 16 Junio 2021 GREGORIO HERNÁNDEZ "GRECO" CO-FOUNDER La Dulce Vida MELROSE PARK Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, Hernéndez started selling music CDs on the street as a boy and held several jobs, from washing dishes to making tacos. All along he dreamed of owning an ice cream store. Together with his friend Jorge Galvan, he developed the idea for La Dulce Vida, a business focused on the processing of fruits and vegetables into healthy juices. La Dulce Vida offers all the traditional Mexican flavors of ice cream and other popular snack items. MOKENA BRIAN ORTIZ PRESIDENT Trinidad Construction L.L.C. MOKENA Ortiz founded Trinidad Construction in 2010. It is a full-service, general contracting and facility maintenance firm specializing in complex projects in occupied buildings. Trinidad's client list consists of 20 Fortune 500 companies including Walgreens, ComEd, Davita, Mondelez, McDonald's and JPMorgan Chase, among others. The company has an extremely diverse workforce of construction professionals, union carpenters, union laborers and union cement masons. Currently the company works in 13 states and is nearing completion on a $22 million new, ground-up office building. MONTGOMERY EDUARDO SALGADO OWNER CS Architectural Woodworking MONTGOMERY Salgado was born in Puerto Rico but his family moved to Elgin in 1990. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in civil engineering and started working for general contractors in Chicagoland. At Keller University he earned an MBA. After 13 years of working for various construction companies, he founded Built Rite Construction in 2012. In 2013, he refocused on architectural woodworking with CS. The company works for general contractors, subcontractors and directly for end-users such as school districts and government agencies. MUNDELEIN ANTHONY HERNANDEZ FOUNDER Factory Enterprises L.L.C. MUNDELEIN Hernandez was a union electrician for 10 years before he started his own company. That closed in 2017 after 18 years in business. His new company performs hydro-excavation for utilities. Most customers are ComEd contractors. The challenges he faced are the financial obstacles for a new company, hiring quality employees and maintaining service on the equipment. His goal is to become a contractor of choice for ComEd and add new customers from the state and other utility divisions. NAPERVILLE ROBERTO RAMIREZ FOUNDER TIDY NAPERVILLE Ramírez was born in Mexico, but his family moved to Chicago when he was 9 and after his father Jesus was the victim of a politically motivated assassination. He worked at several part-time jobs until 1982 when he began working full-time as a janitor for National Cleaning Co. After five years of hard work, he founded TIDY, a full-service, janitorial and custodial. In 1998, Hispanic Business named TIDY as one of the fastest growing Hispanic companies in the country. OAKBROOK TERRACE MARIE DELEANOS FOUNDER & PRESIDENT DeLeanos Financial OAKBROOK TERRACE DeLeanos has been working in the finance and life insurance industry for more than 10 years. As president of DeLeanos Financial, she is dedicated to service the Hispanic community in Chicago and the country. Throughout her journey, she has been able to inspire financial literacy through a TV segment on Telemundo, through her own radio show, and by becoming an author. She is a divorced mother of three, Sean, Kenia and Tania, who have been her biggest inspiration to continue to bring financial knowledge into the homes of the community. ORLAND PARK VERONICA MORENO PRESIDENT ORLAND PARK Originally from el Estate de Mexico, Moreno is a wife, daughter and mother of two children. Her small chain of men's clothing stores specializes in formal wear. She manages four stores and just opened her fifth project focusing on family footwear. She started as an employee in the same company that she owns now. She quickly became a floor supervisor, and later started her own business at the flea market on the weekends while working during the week as district supervisor. PALOS HEIGHTS JOSE R. PAREJA AIA PRESIDENT JP Architects Ltd. PALOS HEIGHTS Pareja is a licensed architect and the president and founder of JP Architects. He came to the United States from Ecuador at age 4, attended Chicago Public Schools and studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He started JP Architects in 2015. The company is a full-service architecture firm located in Palos Heights and is finding success in multiple verticals including, residential design, commercial architecture, restaurant design and public planning / capital improvement. QUAD CITIES MONICA LARA OWNER El Patron Express Mexican Restaurant. QUAD CITIES Lara earned an associate's degree from Black Hawk College and was pursuing a bachelor's degree in early education to become a kindergarten teacher when the opportunity to own a restaurant arose. With very little business experience but with the support of her family and husband, she took the opportunity and opened El Patron in August 2018 at age 23. El Patron Express is a small, local Mexican restaurant that serves traditional and Tex-Mex dishes and specializes in street tacos. SCHILLER PARK LAURA HERRERA OWNER OPERATOR McDonald's Corp. SCHILLER PARK Herrera is a second generation franchise, who started her OAK BROOK David Gomez President & CEO David Gomez Partners Inc. Gomez has excelled in the executive search industry for more than 40 years. He opened David Gomez Partners Inc. in 2019, but he has built two other businesses during his career. As CEO of DGP, Gomez serves clients by locating the best senior talent. He was recently lauded by the executive search community for spearheading an inclusive methodology that has been recognized as best in class. Under Gomez's leadership, DGP established strategic relationships with the nation's leading companies, providing them with the talent crucial to continued business success. His skill in diversity consulting has earned him a consistent and prominent presence in the pages of national media and trade publications. He serves on the executive committee of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was charged with locating its new CEO. Most recently New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used Gomez's expertise to help transition the MTA into a shared service model. S U B U R BS CHICAGO'S CHICAGO'S S U B U R BS 1 1

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