Maria Cardona was born on November 12, 1966, and is an American wit h Spanish ancestry. Cardona was born in Bogota, Colombia, and immigrated to the United States at the age of two. She spent the early part of her life in Ohio and later moved to Leesburg, a town in Central Florida. She was brought up by her parents to love her native language and culture. Maria Cardona graduated from Duke University. She is married and lives with her husband, Bryan Weaver, a community activist, and their two children in Washington, D.C.

Maria Cardona worked for the United States Department of Commerce for five years as Deputy Press Secretary to Secretary Ron Brown. She was also in charge of the press offices for the Department of Commerce. When Secretary Brown was killed in an airplane crash, Cardona spoke at the press briefing. She then became the Press Secretary for the next two Secretaries of Commerce.  Cardona was also a strategist behind the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993.

Maria Cardona went on to become the Director of Communications for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In this role, she was the spokesperson for the government on issues of immigration. Later, she became the Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee and also worked to increase Hispanic voting for the New Democratic Network.

Maria Cardona joined the Dewey Square Group as a principal in 2005, helping her corporate clients reach out to the Latino community. Cardona leads the Multicultural and Public Affairs practices and founded the Latino Strategies Practice, Latinovations at DSG to better serve the Latino community. Latinovations helps Latinos deal with major issues they face. She also guides clients on the best practices for building support for their products and brands among the Hispanic population and offers valuable advice on multicultural campaigns.

Maria Cardona worked for Hillary Clinton during her Democratic primary campaign in 2008, reaching out to Latino voters and speaking on Spanish-language programs as well as on major national television and radio networks. Later, she took on a similar position for Barack Obama once he had won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Maria Cardona started her career in journalism by frequently appearing on television networks such as FOX, Telemundo, MSNBC, and Univision as a political contributor. She later signed with CNN to work exclusively as a political contributor during the 2012 election cycle. Cardona was the first Latina Democratic contributor on CNN. Stories she has covered on CNN include “Trump's 'enabler' charge against Clinton won't work,” “What happened to Boy Wonder?”, “GOP Strategist: brokered convention 'highly unlikely',” “Fiorina to appear on 'View' after 'demented' comments,” “Why Hillary Clinton dominated”, “Donald Trump fever starting to break,” “Celebrate new day for U.S-Cuba relations,” and “Rubio embodies American Dream, but would deny it to others.”