Maria Cardona

Maria Cardona is actively involved in various organizations that function for the improvement of Latino people and Latina women in particular. Among these are Hoops Sagrado, Citizenship Counts, Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino, New America Media and the National Hispana Leadership Institute.

Hoops Sagrado is a Washington, D.C.-based youth leadership and development nonprofit organization that gives at-risk youth from the Washington area the opportunity to spend a month during the summer in the highlands of Guatemala. There, they learn about the Guatemalan culture, teach their peers basketball skills, develop their sense of self, and gain a new perspective on life.

Citizenship Counts is an organization dedicated to teaching civic education with a curriculum demonstrating the value and responsibilities of citizenship, promoting pride in American citizenship, and encouraging students to be involved in their communities.

The Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino is an organization dedicated to creating a museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC that documents and celebrates the lives of Latino Americans. They educate and promote awareness of the initiative, help support legislation, and fundraise for the public share of the future museum, so that all our families can see themselves represented in our nation's capitol.

New America Media is a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. In addition to producing and aggregating news by and for ethnic communities, New America Media also engages in social marketing campaigns, partners with journalism schools across the country, spearheads various youth media programs, and produces a National Directory of Ethnic Media.

The National Hispana Leadership Institute, a national organization based in Washington, D.C., was created in 1987 to address the disparity of representation of Latinas in leadership positions by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Glass Ceiling Initiative. This seminal study found that while minorities and women were making substantial gains in entering the workforce, they were not equally represented at the mid- and senior-levels of management in government or corporate sectors. The report found that Latinas were also significantly underrepresented on corporate boards and in the nonprofit and political arenas.

Cardona uses her work at CNN, CNN en Espanol, and at these charitable and cultural organizations to help the young Hispanics across the country and aid in their social and economic improvement. She was named one of the nation's most influential Latino persons in 2012.

Maria Cardona recently argued with a conservative guest on CNN regarding the Kavanaugh nomination.  The guest was trying to make the case that Judge Kavanaugh was the real victim and said that “Senator Grassley is bending over backwards to do it at her timeline, at her venue and time of her decision because that is the only way to be fair to Judge Kavanaugh and her story.” But Cardona fired back “The Republicans waited almost a year and didn’t even give Merrick Garland a hearing,” referring to President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, who the Republicans infamously refused to even meet with…and now they are into ‘hurry up, hurry up, we need to do this now.” Cardona continued “That is hypocritical and not credible and if they don’t do this on a less rushed time line, they will be denigrating and they will be insulting the collective consciousness of millions of American women who have suffered through sexual assault.”