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(San Antonio, TX) – The Westside Development Corporation will host the 2017 Westside Honors Gala Friday, May 19, 2017 at Rosedale Park, 340 Dartmouth Street, San Antonio, TX 78237. A Board of Directors After Party will follow at The Creamery, 2211 W. Salinas, San Antonio, TX 78207.
Honorees for this year’s gala are Lionel and Kathy Sosa (Arts Category), Roy Terracina (Public Service Category), and Edgewood Veterans (Unsung Hero Category). Honorary Chair is Janie Barrera, founding president and CEO of LiftFund. The event, which includes a silent auction and new this year a Golden Raffle with more than $20,000 in prizes, will begin at 6:30 p.m.
The event will include Dinner/Program at 8 p.m. with the After Party at 10:30 p.m. Event tickets are $150 per person. Table sponsorships are also available. Proceeds from the event support WDC programming for the community and businesses on the Westside. To purchase gala tickets or raffle tickets, visit www.westsidecorp.com, email Info@prosperwestsa.org or call 210.501.0192.
The Westside Development Corporation is a City of San Antonio delegate agency, non-profit organization and Local Government Corporation responsible for attracting new business and assisting existing business in the Westside of San Antonio. The organization has been responsible for fostering economic development, promoting the development and redevelopment of real estate, creating viable urban communities, and preserving the character, culture and history of San Antonio’s Westside. For more information, about the WDC please visit WestsideDevCorp.com.
Biographies of Honorees:
Lionel Sosa
As founder and CEO of Yes! Our Kids Can, Lionel Sosa has brought the worlds of marketing communications, public education, and digital technology to work together to improve lives in ways never before possible.
Lionel founded Sosa Bromley Aguilar and Associates which became the largest Hispanic ad agency in the country serving Fortune 500 clients such as Coca Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Proctor & Gamble, and American Airlines to name a few.
In the field of education, Lionel helped the University of the Incarnate Word increase enrollment from 1200 to its current level of nearly 11,000. Sosa served on the Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System and the Boards of Sesame Workshop (creators of Sesame Street), ACT (American College Testing), PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, and the Board of Trustees for the University of the Incarnate Word. He currently serves as an advisor to the president of Texas A&M San Antonio, is on the board of KIPP San Antonio and the Texas Aspires board of directors. In 2015- 16, he served as a planning member to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Texas 60X30 initiative.
Lionel is an acknowledged expert in Hispanic consumer and voter behavior and was named “One of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America” by Time Magazine. NBC.com named him as one of the five people in the U.S. who are “The Keepers of the Latino Culture.” Sosa was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2001 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree by the University of the Incarnate Word.
Kathy Sosa
Kathy Sosa has had a passion for Latino culture and historic preservation all her life. She holds a certificate in Historic Preservation from the University of Texas in San Antonio. In the last 30 years, she has personally bought and restored 8 homes on San Antonio Historic Districts such as King William, Southtown and Denver Heights. Working in partnership with San Antonio architect Charles Schubert, Kathy has decorated over a dozen historic residences in the last 30 years.
In 2007, Sosa began to explore the artistic expression of mestisaje, the blending of peoples, races, ethnicities, languages, ideas, habits and cultures that characterizes the Texas-Mexico border region that has been her home since childhood. She received national recognition for the result of that passion, the traveling exhibition “Huipiles: A Celebration,” which debuted at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. as part of the Smithsonian Latino Center’s 2007 summer season “Mexico at the Smithsonian” before traveling to the Museo Alameda in San Antonio in 2008. 2009 saw Sosa’s one woman show at San Antonio’s Blue Star Contemporary Art Space. Her work has been featured on CNN, in FiberArts Magazine, in Skirt!, San Antonio Woman, Country Lifestyle, Destinations, and is available in San Antonio through AnArte Gallery.
Roy Terracina
Roy D. Terracina, 70, has five children (four sons and one daughter) and nine grandchildren. He currently resides in San Antonio, Texas. A native of Chicago, Mr. Terracina went to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and received both bachelors and master degrees in Finance.
After careers in banking, investment banking, merger acquisition consulting and treasurer of four public companies, Mr. Terracina purchased Sterling Foods in San Antonio, which he sold in 1993. Since the time he sold Sterling Foods in 1993, Mr. Terracina primarily invests for his own account and sits on numerous boards, both business and charitable. He currently is board Chair of Our Lady of the Lake University and Vice Chair for U.S. Global Investors, (GROW). He is also a Board Member of Michael Angelo’s Gourmet Italian Foods, Massage Heights, LLC, and the Najim Family Foundations.
He was most recently honored as the “Peacemaker of the Year” by the San Antonio Bar Association and was also awarded “The Soul of the City” award by the San Antonio City Centre. His hobbies are fitness, which includes boxing, travel and spending time with his family.
Janie Barrera, Honorary Chair
Janie Barrera is founding president and CEO of LiftFund, the largest nonprofit micro- and smallbusiness lender in the United States. The organization provides loans and management training to enterprises, from startups to long established businesses and operates in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Since its inception in 1994, LiftFund has disbursed more than 18,000 loans totaling more than $222 million – with an impressive 94 percent repayment rate.
Barrera has received nationwide recognition for her accomplishments, including the Small Business Administration Financial Services Advocate of the Year and the Minority Enterprise Development Consortium’s Corporate Advocate of the Year. President Barack Obama appointed Ms. Barrera to the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability and she also was named to the board of directors for the Federal Reserve of Dallas’ San Antonio Branch. In 2015, she was named to San Antonio Business Hall of Fame. She received a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of the Incarnate Word.
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