Helen Iris Torres

Helen Iris Torres is the CEO of Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), where she leads one of the nation’s most influential Latina organizations. As the CEO of HOPE for 21 years, Helen has strategically built a Latina leadership and advocacy infrastructure in California, composed of thousands of civically engaged Latina leaders serving in elected and appointed office, as business, philanthropic and community leaders. Helen is responsible for taking an organization with one staff person, the framework of a leadership institute, and mid-sized conferences to what is now a sophisticated Latina leadership enterprise.

Ms. Torres has led coalitions in California that have advocated for Latinas in key leadership positions. Resulting in the first Latina to serve on CPUC, and the first Latina appointed to the California Supreme Court. She has created robust pathways to leadership for Latinas in high school to Latinas across the United States and Mexico. She has been instrumental in the development and implementation of HOPE’s four leadership programs that has trained over 1,200 Latinas, resulting in over 1,600 leadership positions being filled by Latinas.

She has served on various commissions under Governor Gray Davis, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Governor Jerry Brown. From allocating and overseeing AmeriCorps funding to governing on the influential “Little Hoover Commission.” Ms. Torres currently serves on the Board of the Public Policy Institute of California and is a member of the Trusteeship, a Southern California chapter of the International Women’s Forum, a global organization of preeminent women of significant and diverse achievement. Helen is a proven public servant and is a sought-after speaker on women’s issues and an advisor to projects such as The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, a study by Maria Shriver in partnership with the Center for American Progress. She has been recognized by the Los Angeles Dodgers as a “community hero” and by Hispanics in Philanthropy for her advocacy work on behalf of Latinas. Her story has been part of a California State University oral and public history exhibit titled “Voces de Liberacion: Latinas in Politics in Southern California.”
Helen and her husband Jonathan reside in San Bernardino, where they are raising their twin sons Adam and Joshua to be good people, feminists, and star wars fans.