Honorary Steering Committee

Harriett Romo is a Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at San Antonio and the Director of the Child and Adolescent Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) and the UTSA Mexico Center.

She earned her PhD in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego and has Master’s degrees in Education from UCLA and in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She did a Post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University at the Center for the Study of Families, Youth and Children.

Her research has focused on immigrant children, how infants acquire language in bilingual homes, and Mexican American students’ success in school. She is currently directing a federal grant project that helps Head Start teachers earn degrees and improve the instruction in Head Start programs and one that focuses on the impact of transnational lives on well-educated Mexican immigrants and their adolescent children.

She received two grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which have funded collaborations with Edgewood School District to enhance the Cardenas Child Development Center and San Antonio Independent School District to build a child development center at the Navarro campus. She has evaluated Early Reading First projects working with the Community Action, Inc. The Head Start agency in San Marcos and students in her classes have evaluated projects on parent involvement in schools in San Antonio and family financial security initiatives on the Westside, Southside and Eastside of San Antonio.

She was an associate professor at UT Austin before coming to UTSA in 1999. At UTSA she teaches courses on the Sociology of Childhood, Language and Society, the Border, Race and Ethnic Relations and Qualitative Research Methods.

She and Ricardo have two children, a daughter, Anadelia, who teaches Latin American History at Texas State (married to Tim O’ Sullivan who is a Trinity University professor), and a son, Carlos, who is an attorney at Baker Botts Law Firm in Austin (married to Lynsey, a graduate student at UT Austin).

Ricardo Romo became the fifth president of The University of Texas at San Antonio in May 1999. As President, he leads one of the fastest-growing institutions of higher education in Texas and the nation. UTSA, under his leadership, is now poised to become the state’s next premier research university.

During President Romo’s tenure, UTSA’s enrollment has grown 53%, and the University has added numerous programs and facilities to enhance student life. The number of doctoral degree programs has increased from three to 21.

A native of  San Antonio’s West Side, President Romo graduated from Fox Tech High School and attended The University of Texas at Austin on a track scholarship. Romo was the first Texan to run the mile in less than four minutes, and his mile record lasted 41 years. He earned a B.S. degree in education (1967).

He holds a master’s degree in history from Loyola Marymount University (1970) and a Ph.D. in history from UCLA (1975). A nationally respected urban historian, Romo is the author of “East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio,” which is now in its ninth printing (one in Spanish).

Romo has received many honors during his academic career. In November 2007, he was recognized with the Isabel la Catolica award, the highest award given to non-Spanish subjects, bestowed upon him by King Juan Carlos of Spain. In October 2008, Romo received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Texas Exes Alumni Association.

President Romo is married to Dr. Harriett Romo, a Professor of Sociology at UTSA. She also serves as Director of UTSA’s Mexico Center and the Bank of America Child and Adolescent Policy Research Institute (CAPRI). They have one son, Carlos, who earned degrees from Stanford University and The University of Texas School of Law. Their daughter, Anadelia, a graduate of Princeton University, received a doctoral degree from Harvard University and presently teaches at Texas State University. 

Mayor Julián Castro

Julián Castro was elected Mayor of San Antonio on May 9, 2009. A 35-year-old San Antonio native, Mayor Castro is the youngest mayor of a Top 50 American city.

In 2001, at the age of 26, Castro became the youngest elected city councilman at that point in San Antonio history. Throughout his tenure in public service, Mayor Castro has championed a vision of economic growth and a top-notch quality of life for all San Antonians.

Befitting those goals, Mayor Castro has placed an emphasis on education during his first term in office with a goal of positioning the city to attract the jobs of the future. His initiatives include a holistic approach to raising local educational attainment levels by increasing city participation in early childhood education, high school dropout prevention and comprehensive higher education counseling.

In 2005, Castro founded The Law Offices of Julián Castro, PLLC, a civil litigation practice. He has served on the board of Family Services Association, the Clear Channel San Antonio Advisory Board and the San Antonio National Bank Advisory Board. In addition to his community service, Mayor Castro has taught courses at The University of Texas at San Antonio, Trinity University, and St. Mary’s University.

Mayor Castro earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University with honors and distinction in 1996 and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2000. He is married to Erica Lira Castro, an elementary school teacher, and they are the proud parents of a baby girl, Carina, born in March 2009.

Mayor Castro’s brother, Joaquin, is a Congressman representing Texas’s 20^th Congressional District.

Francisco Cigarroa

Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., was appointed the 10th chancellor of The University of Texas System by the UT System Board of Regents on Jan. 9, 2009.  He began his service as the UT System’s chief administrative officer on Feb. 2, 2009.  As chancellor, Dr. Cigarroa oversees one of the largest public systems of higher education in the nation, with nine universities and six health institutions,  an annual operating budget of $11.9 billion (FY 2010), including $2.5 billion in sponsored programs funded by federal, state, local and private sources, and more than 202,000 students and 84,000 employees.  Dr. Cigarroa also serves as vice chairman for policy on the Board of Directors of The University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO).

A nationally renowned pediatric and transplant surgeon, Dr. Cigarroa served as president of the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio from 2000 until his appointment as chancellor

A native of Laredo, Dr. Cigarroa earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale and received his medical degree from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. During his 12 years of postgraduate training, Dr. Cigarroa was chief resident at Harvard’s teaching hospital, Massachusetts General in Boston, and completed a fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore

In 1995, he joined the faculty of the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and, in October, 2000, was appointed its third president. Immediately prior to his appointment as president, he served as director of pediatric surgery. In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed him to serve as a member of the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science.

A member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of The National Academies, Dr. Cigarroa is a Fellow of the American College of Surgery and a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery and has received a certificate in pediatric surgery from the American Board of Surgery. He is a member of the Yale University Council and was most recently elected in June 2010 to serve as an Alumni Fellow to The Yale Corporation, the university’s governing board.

He and his wife, Graciela, an attorney, have two grown daughters, Maria Cristina and Barbara Carisa.

Tom C. Frost

Chairman Emeritus Frost, San Antonio, Texas.

A native San Antonian, Tom Frost is the fourth generation of his family to oversee the bank founded by his great grandfather, Colonel T.C. Frost in 1868.

Frost is Chairman Emeritus of Frost, which offers banking, insurance and investments through more than 110 financial centers across Texas in the San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, Houston, Dallas, and Rio Grande Valley regions.

He graduated from San Antonio Academy and the Texas Military Institute.

Frost graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Washington and Lee University, where he earned a B.S. degree with a major in Commerce. He holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Austin College, an Honorary Doctor of International Relations degree from the University of the Americas in Mexico City, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Our Lady of the Lake University. He is a recipient of the Aguila Azteca the highest honor the Government of Mexico can give to a non-Mexican citizen.

He began his banking career in 1950 and was elected Assistant Cashier in Frost’s Foreign Department in October of that year. In 1962, he was elected President, and in 1971, Chairman of the Board.

Active in industry affairs, Frost is a past director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the San Antonio Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank and a past member of the Federal Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve System. He is past President of the Association of Reserve City Bankers, the Texas Bankers Association and the San Antonio Clearing House Association.

Frost has also supported community development in San Antonio, with service on the Board of Trustees of the San Antonio Medical Foundation, the Texas Research and Technology Foundation and the Southwest Texas Methodist Hospital. He is also Director Emeritus of the Board of Governors of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute and a trustee for the Southwest Research Institute. He is a past member of the Executive Committee of the San Antonio Livestock Exposition and is Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Bexar County Performing Arts Center Foundation.

He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the McNay Art Museum, past chairman of the Executive Committee of the Free Trade Alliance of San Antonio and former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the YMCA. He co-founded the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. and is a past member of the US-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (Fulbright-Garcia Robles Commission).

Committed to educational excellence, Frost currently is Chairman Emeritus of the Development Board of the University of Texas at San Antonio and is Past Executive Chairman of the Board of Governors of his alma mater, TMI. He is also a Trustee Emeritus of Washington & Lee University, Senior Trustee of Austin College and is an honorary member of the Development Board for the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is a past member of the Foundation Board of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) Foundation and past Chairman of the Texas Independent College Fund.

Frost is married to Patricia Holden, a San Antonio native and they have four sons and 14 grandchildren.

2006 Ambassador Martha Lara

Martha Irene Lara Alatorre is a Mexican diplomatic and politician; she is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party  (PRI) and native to the state of Chihuahua.

Martha Lara gained notoriety in 1986 when the, then governor of Chihuahua, Fernando Baeza Meléndez named her General Secretary of the State Government, being the first woman to occupy that position. This was a very politically tense moment due to the accusations of electoral fraud against Baeza and the social and political consequences of the entity. She alone managed to propitiate a climate of political stability in the state; she worked in this the full term of Baeza (6 years).

In 1994, she ran for a seat as a senator for Chihuahua for the period that ended in 2000, and she won. In the senate she presided over the International Relations Commission.

Martha Lara has been recognized as one of the most important politicians and diplomatists of Mexico. She is a member of the Exterior Mexican Service since 1971, and in 1994, the then president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, awarded her with the ambassador degree.

In the exterior she has specialized in the relations between Mexico and the United States and knows very well the border relationships between both nations. She has been in charge of the consulates in Laredo, Houston and El Paso, Texas and was the head of the consulate in Seattle, Washington that presided over the states of Oregon and Alaska. She was also in charge of the General Consulate of Mexico in Miami, Florida.

When her time as a senator ended she was named head of the general consulate of Mexico in Los Angeles, California and afterwards she had the same charge in San Antonio, Texas. Both cities have a large number of Mexicans and are the biggest consulates of Mexico.

Martha Lara has also been in charge of the multilateral area of the Exterior Relations Secretary, as General Director for the UN and for the American States Organization.

She is a columnist for the newspaper El Heraldo de Chihuahua, writing about the political life of her state. Her book, Chihuahua, an Experience is about her experiences during the transition to democracy in the state of Chihuahua in 1992, in which she played a very important role.

Today she is in charge of the Industrial Development Secretary in Chihuahua.

Raúl Rodríguez Barocio

Engineer Raúl Rodríguez Barocio received the first International award from the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos (AEM) in 2005 for his support of the friendship between Mexico and the United States.

He graduated with honors from Harvard University and el Tecnológico de Monterrey. He was president of a marketing and systems company, Secretary for the economic development in Tamaulipas, commercial advisor of Mexico in Canada and executive director of Bancomext.

After living in Mexico, Canada and Europe he was presented with the opportunity of going to Asia as an ambassador or working in the North America Development Bank (NADB). He choose the second option.

This is how he arrived with his family to San Antonio 15 years ago. When his time as General Director at NABD ended in 2005, he went back to business as a consultant and investor. He is also a university professor.