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Kimberly Casiano
Title: Member, Board of Directors, Ford Motor Company
In 1988, Kimberly Casiano joined her family’s publishing and marketing business, Casiano Communications Inc. and became President in 1994. Founded 33 years ago, Casiano Communications ( www.casiano.com) is the largest U.S. Hispanic publisher of magazines and periodicals in the country. Each of its ten business and consumer publications, is the undisputed leader in its respective market segment. The company’s Internet portal , www.puertoricowow.com, is one of the largest bilingual (Spanish/English) portals in the U.S. with about 20 million hits monthly. Through its subsidiary Direct ResponSource, Casiano Communications also provides bilingual (English-Spanish) direct marketing, call center and customer care services to numerous Fortune 1000 companies targeting customers in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Hispanic Market.
In December 2003, Ms. Casiano was elected to the Board of Directors of Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F). She was the first Hispanic woman to serve on any of the top five Fortune 100 corporate boards. Ford, the Fortune #5 company headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, is one of the world’s largest automakers, with over 300,000 employees in 200 markets on six continents. Its automotive brands include Aston Martin, Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury and Volvo.
In April 2006, Ms. Casiano was elected to the Board of Directors of Mutual of America. Founded in 1945, Mutual of America, a Fortune 1000 company headquartered in New York with 37 regional offices throughout the United States, provides retirement product and insurance coverage to employees of nonprofit organizations and small and medium-sized businesses.
From 1981 to 1988, Ms. Casiano managed her own company, Caribbean Marketing Overseas Corporation, to foster trade and investment in the Caribbean and Latin America. The company served as Caribbean Basin Initiative consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (A.I.D.) in developing and executing public/private sector projects throughout the region.
Ms. Casiano, for whom education is the key to success, is active on the board of a number of non-profit organizations that support education, including the Board of Trustees of the Hispanic College Fund (HCF), a national organization awarding nearly 1,000 scholarships per year to Hispanic youth. She is co-founder and Vice-Chair of Nuestra Casa de los Niños, a Puerto Rico-based organization that provides private-school education for economically disadvantaged children.
Ms. Casiano was recently invited to join the Board of Advisors of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. For ten years, Ms. Casiano chaired the annual fundraising event for the American Cancer Society in Puerto Rico.
Ms. Casiano's involvement in business organizations includes the Board of Directors and Chapter Chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), Puerto Rico chapter. She is also a member of the Access America Task Force of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), Washington, D.C.
Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Ms. Casiano moved to Puerto Rico when she was 12, thus growing-up in a bicultural, bilingual environment. She studied Politics and Latin American Studies at Princeton University (B.A., magna cum laude, 1979) and obtained her Master’s in Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Harvard Business School in 1981. Ms. Casiano is married to Peruvian-born Juan F. Woodroffe and the couple has two children.