Business & Finance

Washington, DC--(HISPANIC PR WIRE - PRNewswire)--January 23, 2008--LATINA Style Magazine proudly celebrates the 10th Year Anniversary of the LATINA Style 50 corporate evaluation program. The LATINA Style 50 Report is the most respected evaluation of corporate America’s career development opportunities for Latinas, and sets the standard for corporate America’s sensitivity to the needs and goals of professional Hispanic women in the workplace.

“We are proud to have reached a milestone for providing a national report that highlights those corporations which practice workplace diversity at the highest standards for our Latina professionals,” says Robert E. Bard, president and CEO of LATINA Style. “This year I am particularly pleased to acknowledge those corporations that have made the Top 50 list every year since 1998: Aetna Inc., Allstate Insurance Co., American Express Co., Citigroup Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Fannie Mae, General Motors Corp., IBM, Merrill Lynch, Principal Financial Group, The Procter & Gamble Co., State Farm Mutual Insurance Companies and Wachovia. These companies have truly shown a commitment to excellence and investment on their precious assets, the Latina professional.”

Companies responding to LATINA Style's questionnaire were evaluated based on issues that LATINA Style readers identified as most important to them in the workplace. Among the principal areas of evaluation were: number of Latina executives, mentoring programs, Latina board members, educational opportunities, alternative work policies, dependent/child care support, employee benefits, women’s issues, job retraining, affinity groups and Hispanic relations. Evaluations for the 2008 annual report were based on 2007 data.

The number of Hispanic working women in the U.S. workforce exceeds seven and a half million and the numbers continue to rise. LATINA Style 50 companies employ 4,627,936 employees, of those 306,273 are Latinas, representing 6.6% of the total workforce of the selected companies.

The 2007 Company of the Year is New York based, PepsiCo. PepsiCo supports the development of its Latina employees through a myriad of networking groups like the Pepsi Latino Network and Adelante. Past Company of the Year winners since 1998 include Allstate, US West, SBC, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, Verizon, General Mills, Bank of America and McDonalds’.

The awards ceremony honoring the10th Year Anniversary and LATINA Style 50 Companies will take place on February 7, 2008 at the Renaissance Washington DC Hotel, 999 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20001. For more information regarding the LATINA Style 50, please visit the magazine website at http://www.latinastyle.com.


THE LATINA Style 50 - 2007

Top 50 Companies

Aetna Inc.
Aflac Incorporated
Alcatel-Lucent
Allstate Insurance Company
American Airlines
American Express Company
AT&T
Bank of America
BNSF Railways Company
Citigroup Inc.
Colgate-Palmolive Company
Comcast Corporation
Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.
Credit Suisse
Chrysler Corporation
Darden Restaurants
Fannie Mae
General Mills, Inc.
General Motors Corporation
HSBC-North America
IBM
JPMorgan Chase
Kellogg Company
Kraft Foods, Inc.
Liz Claiborne Inc.
Macy’s Inc
Marriott International, Inc.
MasterCard Worldwide
McDonald’s Corporation
Merrill Lynch
MGM Mirage
Morgan Stanley
New York Life Insurance Company
Northern Trust
PepsiCo, Inc. - Company of the Year 2007
Principal Financial Group
Procter & Gamble
Prudential Financial, Inc.
Qwest Communications Intl., Inc.
SODEXHO, INC.
Southern California Edison



State Farm Mutual Insurance Companies
The Coca-Cola Company
Union Pacific Railroad Company
USAA
Verizon Communications, Inc.
Wachovia
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wells Fargo & Company
Xerox Corporation


Honorable Mention Companies

Bausch & Lomb
Freddie Mac
Sprint Nextel Corporation
UnitedHealthcare, Inc.
United Technologies Corporation