Latina of Influence | Magdalena Beltrán-del Olmo
Magdalena Beltrán-del Olmo is a 2015 Latina of Influence named by Hispanic Lifestyle. Magdalena is being recognized for her pioneering approach to strategic communications and journalistic storytelling in the philanthropic and health care sectors. Hispanic Lifestyle’s 2015 Latinas of Influence will be recognizing Magdalena and her fellow Latinas of Influence during a luncheon held in their honor on at Latina Conference 2015.
Magdalena Beltrán-del Olmo
Magdalena Beltrán-del Olmo is the former vice president of communications for The California Wellness Foundation which is nationally recognized in the field of philanthropy for its strategic communications program and public education campaigns. She has more than 30 years of professional experience in communications management, social marketing and journalism. Before joining Cal Wellness in 1996, Beltrán-del Olmo was a director of public affairs and communications for Kaiser Permanente in the Los Angeles area. Prior to that, she was vice president of Coronado Communications — a firm specializing in social marketing — where she oversaw public education, entertainment and corporate accounts, including the national multilingual, multimedia public education campaign for the 1986 immigration amnesty legalization, HBO and the California tobacco education campaign.
She was also associate director for Los Angeles-based CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California in the 1980s, where she developed the nation’s first computerized job referral service for ethnic journalists in the news media. She worked with CCNMA to help found the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Beltrán-del Olmo also worked as a newspaper reporter with the Orange County Register and Gannett-owned Salinas Californian.
Beltrán-del Olmo is a member of the board of directors of Southern California Grantmakers. She also served on the North Los Angeles County Task Force of the California Senate Select Committee on Autism Related Disorders, and the California Legislative Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism. She was previously a member of the board of the Communications Network, Hispanics in Philanthropy and the Council on Foundations’ communications committee. She also served on the mayoral transition team for former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and volunteered her communications expertise for the Cure Autism Now Foundation.
Beltrán-del Olmo graduated in 1982 with degrees in journalism and Mexican-American studies from California State University, Northridge, where she received the Outstanding Graduate in Journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi. She was inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honor society for journalism and mass communications. She has received numerous awards for her communications and advocacy work. She is the creator and coeditor of “Frank del Olmo: Commentaries on His Times,” a book of columns written by her husband, the late Frank del Olmo, a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning journalist who worked for 34 years at the Los Angeles Times, where he served as the associate editor.
