Board Members

Monica Peraza was born and raised in Mexico City. After studying  Education at Universidad Panamericana, she decided to take the business route and founded and managed two companies. In August of 2007, Monica moved to the New York Metropolitan Area where she created Dalma Imports, LLC, whose primary function was the commercialization of Mexican products in wholesale markets in the United States and Canada. Since then, she has served as President and CEO of the company, which has grown into various divisions including those of Food Products, E-Commerce, Consulting, and Training. She was named Founding President of MexNet Alliance in June 2009. She currently serves also as Vice-President for the Hispanic Alliance for the Performing Arts and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center for the Performing Arts.

Elias Hermida was born and raised in Mexico City. He graduated with a degree in Law from Anahuac University and later completed a Master’s Degree in International Relations and Communication from the Complutense de Madrid University in Spain. Throughout his career, Elias has worked for HSBC Financial Group, in addition to serving as legal and financial advisor for the Mexican Government? Ministries of Interior and Finance and for the Mexican Embassy in Spain. He is currently an active member of the International Business Committee of the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and works at 1-800-HISPANO, a startup company that he co-founded to provide a free information resource for Spanish dominant Hispanics in Austin and its surrounding areas.

Maria Jimena was born and raised in Mexico City but later moved with her family to the New York Metro Area. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Corporate Communication and a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Spanish Literature and French with a minor in Italian from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a two-time Distinguished College Scholar at UT, as well as member of Pi Delta Phi National French Honor Society and Sigma Delta Pi National Hispanic Honor Society. Besides her participation in MexNet Alliance, she serves as president of Il Circolo Italiano, an organization dedicated to promoting Italian language and culture. She speaks four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian.

Leo is a social entrepreneur with exceptionally diverse experience launching and managing non-profits, leading multi-disciplinary teams and building solid relationships with civic and corporate leaders. His 15-year career has spanned executive management, business development, consulting, support and engineering positions with Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Coremetrics, Trilogy and Apple. He has been directly and actively involved with non-profit EDCO Ventures; Copán, LLC; NOC Films’ “Zero:Hour.” He has collaborated with Mexic-Arte Museum; Proyecto Mosaico; First Presbyterian Church of Austin; PeopleFund, Camp Biz$tart, RISE High, Manos de Cristo and The Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas. He also created and teaches Austin’s first childbirth prep class for new fathers at GetBabied. He attended Stanford University’s Computer Systems Engineering Program.

Manuel Alverdi was born and raised in Mexico City. He studied Actuary at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Business Administration at the City University of New York and International Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. Manuel’s professional career has been primarily in the Financial Services industry working in different areas such as data analysis, insurance, taxes and marketing. He is the founder and Managing Principal of Taxes Impuestos y Más LLC a company dedicated to serve the Hispanic Community in matters of taxes, accounting and business consulting. He also participates as the SME in Tax Matters at the business seminars with MexNet Alliance where he is also the Finance Director. Manuel speaks English, Spanish and a little German.

Toni Calderon was born and raised in Mexico City and moved to Austin, Texas with his family in 1995 where he attended high school and then graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelors of Science in Advertising. His career has been focused on the motorsports industry where he has worked with some of the primary Hispanic drivers and sponsors in North American racing.  Currently he owns Casus Management, Inc, a motorsports consulting company focused on driver management, sponsorship and B2B development and media and PR representation.

Mario Tapia was born in Mexico City. He studied International Relations at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Has published two books in Mexico, and has collaborated with the Mexican newspaper Reforma. He also has participated in the research and publication of several Mexican History books. One of them is the last winner of the Anastasio G. Saravia Award, granted by Grupo Banamex. During 2007, he and a partner created Orbi Commerce, a company designed to promote the export of Mexican pecan to China. Currently, he is an editorial collaborator with El Mundo Newspaper in Austin, Texas.