2023 Latino Lideres Awards!
◦ Latino Lider: Adamar Gonzalez Figueroa
◦ What is your Hispanic Heritage: Puerto Rican
◦ What area of Florida do you live in:Central Florida -Kissimmee
◦ What is your profession: Medical Doctor
◦ Please complete the questionnaire below and return them via email.
◦ When submitted please include your question and answer together.
◦ Please email your bio and your full color headshot (300 dpi) to: Jolie@LatinTimesMedia.com
◦ Please include a brief video introduction.
Please review the schedule of events for your geographical area and confirm that you can attend the Awards Event -before Kissimmee/Orlando: Sun, Oct 8th submitting -it is required in order to be awarded the recognition. Please see schedule at: www.TasteOfLatino.com
◦ 1. Latin Times Magazine: Tell us about what you do for a living and how you got into it
I have been a doctor by profession for the past 18 years. I carry my mission dedicated to health and disease prevention in my Hispanic community and in the correctional medicine environment. I also provide medical help in countries where a doctor cannot be reached after any atmospheric event through my Medical missionary foundation Unidos de Corazón a Corazón. I am currently working on the awareness of dietary changes and life changes for the prevention of conditions that affect our Hispanic youth from obesity to chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer through my Integrative Medical center.
◦ 2. Latin Times Magazine: In your industry, what would you say separates you from your competition.
My philosophy of health goes beyond providing primary help focused only on diseases. For me health is a completely integral part of the human being and is the combination of mind, body and soul. Where we can, through good nutrition, lifestyle changes and a healthy mental and social attitude, transform our health and live in a state of happiness and balance in all senses of our life. I want to promote the importance to understands the benefit of being in balance in all areas of our life to feel and stay healthy in order to get the best benefit from our life and live it in fullness and happiness.
◦3. Latin Times Magazine: Why do you feel you were nominated
I feel extremely happy and honored that I can continue to carry this message of love to our lives, our bodies, and a healthier community. It is an honor for me to be able to represent health in a more holistic way and full of much hope for all people who think that illness is inevitable and that we are all destined to live sick. It is a great joy for me to be nominated as a Hispanic woman by Latin Times Magazine.
◦4. Latin Times Magazine: During Covid-19, tell us about your Biggest Challenge/obstacle and how you overcame it/or are overcoming it
The Covid pandemic was an extremely hard stage in my life.I had to face battle especially in an environment where very few of medical providers had the opportunity to really help and make the difference. For a year and a half, I worked in a jail and prison and in medical community clinic with Covid patients and preventing the spread of the Covid 19 condition. This mission was more complicated in the correctional facilities where it was an enormous contagious danger to prisoners, health officers and personnel, as well as the community. I was working tremendously because there were many fellow doctors who got sick and died as well as officers and nurses and where there were few personnel and many complications to be facing with a condition that we did not know completely and where there was a lot of fear in our community. It was two years of my life as a doctor that demanded most of my physical and mental focus outside to be able to get ahead and provide health. I was also working with the homeless in the Orlando area when they also needed both social and medical help and support.
◦5. Latin Times Magazine: Tell us about your biggest achievement, and how you achieved it
When I arrived in this country 12 years ago, I arrived with the illusion of helping in the field of medicine. I arrived first at a correctional facility and learned with the time to know a population very ignored by our society and where I was able to work with passion my vocation completely. In just two years I was promoted from Director of a correctional center to be Regional Director of the prisons in South east Florida. I was the first Hispanic woman to hold that title and to be director of the only correctional hospital located in Lake Butler. Then I began to see the need to help beyond prison bars and help my Hispanic community with health problems after the death of my mother from cancer. So, I decided to start working in the community through the prevention of inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases by establishing the First Center for Integrative Medicine located in Florida where our mission is to bring health in an integral way and in balance with the person and the society. I focus my philosophy in changes in nutrition and lifestyle to understand the cause of disease through functional and nutritional medicine.. I am also enormously happy to establish the “Unidos de Corazon a Corazon” Missionary Medical Foundation and to be able to bring medical aid to countries such as Africa, Honduras, Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo and where every year we bring health along with other doctors to thousands of people who do not have access to a doctor and medical equipment as well as medicines.
◦ 6. Latin Times Magazine: What is next for you? What can people expect to see from you?
For me the next step is to take this integral approach beyond the state to our Hispanic community, where each person has the hope of knowing their body better and how to become in balance both physically, mentally, and spiritually to achieve health and happiness. I would like my message to be able to be projected also to other cultures and countries where there is no concept of complete and integral health. This would be done through presentations, books, and media where the message arrived simple, clear but with complete information in a responsible and clinically proven way. I would like to work to bring this message in different languages and to other cultures and countries where there is not yet a broad knowledge of health in a more comprehensive and complete way.
◦ 7.Latin Times Magazine: What does being a U.S. Citizen mean to you?
Although I was born with my American citizenship, I respect and value my citizen every day of my life because it gives me the opportunity to freely express my ideas and allows me to have the opportunities to aspire to improve as a woman, doctor, and citizen in this country. I also feel fortunate to have been born in a country of freedom and harmony to follow my values and beliefs. I feel blessed because I share the freedom of being able to be in a country of great challenges, but at the same time great opportunities for those who wait for them, see them, and do not let them pass.
◦ 8. Latin Times Magazine: What is your opinion of the state of affairs in our nation? And what role do you see Hispanics/Latinos playing in the future of our nation.
I understand that our nation is made up of hundreds of different races and cultures and it is this that makes this American nation so unique. However, in recent years we have been living in a time of hatred and non-tolerance towards others. The largest populations in this country including the Hispanic and Latin American have begun to make a difference both socially and politically. Today we have many Hispanics in privileged political positions in which they have advocated for fairer laws that help reduce that discrimination that still exists and help reduce hatred, discrimination and increase opportunities for so many immigrants and foreigners. Hispanics are exerting a force beyond labor but also intellectual that in my opinion will change the destiny of this country towards one more equal for all with the help of other great cultures which also want to contribute to live in a country of equality and social peace.
◦ 9.Latin Times Magazine: What is the best lesson that you have learned in leadership and how has it helped your career?
As a leader I learned to be a leader who works by example not with words, to listen to their recommendations and opinions and above all to work with a definitive purpose that helps us improve both our mission or work and our personalities. The best injury I got was during covid pandemic time when I learned to not only be a doctor but to take on new roles to be able to help my whole team. Having few staff, I had to rotate and take my hands where there was no staff and where solidarity was more important than finishing a shift. For me, the inspiring leader does not write rules. This experience helped me greatly to be able to run my clinic today with the inspiration of my employees and my patients.
◦ 10.Latin Times Magazine: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to share?
One of the areas that fills me with the most satisfaction is educating my patients and seeing that they feel happy with their body and their health. It is also to be able to help my community in the social area with the foundation to give hope to so many people without resources to obtain medical help or after any event or atmospheric disaster. I feel happy and extremely blessed of my vocation and to be an instrument of change in my patients and in my Hispanic community.
◦ 11.Latin Times Magazine: What is YOUR comida Latina favorita?
Although healthy eating is extremely important to me... I love the Asopao de gandules and some good tostones, especially that my dad makes for me.