Margarita De Leon is a Regional Director for The Kaleidoscope Group, a full service diversity consulting firm based in Chicago. She has worked with Kaleidoscope Group over the past 10 years securing and managing clients, conducting assessments and facilitating diversity training throughout various locations in the United States.
Margarita has enjoyed an impressive career that spans more than 30 years, including 17 in the healthcare industry. Margarita’s experience in areas of Hispanic marketing, advertising and nonprofit development, corporate communications, publishing, fundraising, special events, diversity and public service has helped Ohio’s Latino community move forward in a positive direction. She is the former publisher of BRAVO Magazine, Ohio’s first Hispanic magazine introduced in the fall of 1997 as a newspaper and then in 2003 as a magazine.
She co-chaired a half million dollar fundraising campaign in northwest Ohio for five institutions of higher education from 2003 – 2006 for Latino students attending college. She helped to establish the Latino Youth Summit in 2001, a gathering of Latino students from around the state in grades seven through twelve to encourage graduation from high school and college, at The University of Toledo She has been a featured keynote speaker, panelist and facilitator on issues dealing with Latinos, diversity, leadership and public relations.
Among her many awards and recognitions, Margarita was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame (October 2000) for her advocacy work; received the national Ana Maria Arias Memorial Business Fund Award from the Unites States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for her entrepreneurial efforts as a Latina publisher(2002); received the Ohio Hispanic Businesswoman of the Year Award from the Ohio Hispanic Chambers of Commerce for BRAVO (2002); received the Entrepreneurial Businesswoman of the Year Award from the Lorain County Urban League and Cleveland’s Hispanic Business Association (2004); and received the Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year Award from the local chapter of the National Association of Fundraising Professionals in 2006. In 2007 she received the Estrella Award from the University of Toledo for helping to found the Latino Youth Summit and for the Diamante Latino Scholars campaign which she spearheaded.
Margarita is an alumnus of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, where she attended Harvard University’s JFK School of Government and the Center for Creative Leadership and Leadership America, a national nonprofit leadership development program for women. Some of her current volunteer activities include serving on the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority Board of Trustees (the first Latina/Latino to do so); committee member on the National City Community Advisory Board; committee member for the 20th Annual Regional Diamante Latino Recognition and Scholarship Banquet; committee member for the Annual Latino Youth Summit; and consultant fundraiser for the 9th annual LatinoFest which she helped to found.
Margarita has Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Bowling Green State University and an MBA from The University of Toledo. She resides in Toledo, Ohio, with her husband, Sylvester Duran, and their three children. She enjoys contemporary Latino music, art and literature.