Hispanic Star: Selena Gomez

Claudia Romo Edelman is the founder of the We Are All Human Foundation and Hispanic Star and has worked for twenty-five years with internationally recognized institutions, including the United Nations, the Global Fund, the World Economic Forum, and UNICEF. She’s led some of the most successful global campaigns in the last decade, including Product (RED), the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in collaboration with the United Nations, the creation of the SDG Lions, and the rebranding of the UN Refugee Agency.

Karla Arenas Valenti grew up in Mexico City in a house built around a tree. Her life was always filled with elements of the fantastical which she readily incorporates into her storytelling, taking readers on journeys steeped in magical realism. Karla is the Pura Belpre Award-winning author of Lola, as well as the best-selling and critically-acclaimed author of Lotería, the exciting Legendarios chapter book series, and various picture books. She is also the co-author of Hispanic Star: Selena Gomez and Pedro Pascal. Karla’s stories are heavily influenced by her Mexican heritage and layered with ideas and concepts she’s picked up in her many travels around the world. Karla currently resides in the Chicagoland area with her husband and three kids, two cats, and hundreds of books.

Alexandra Beguez is a Cuban-American illustrator and cartoonist who was born and raised in New Jersey. Alexandra has received awards and recognition from the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles, 3x3 Magazine, Creative Quarterly Journal, and Latin American Ilustración. She is a recipient of the 2021 New Jersey Artist Fellowship Grant, awarded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Nib, The Believer Magazine, Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, the Hispanic Star series. She also contributed to the graphic novel anthology, Guantanamo Voices, which received the 2021 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Eisner Awards in the Best Anthology category and was included in The New York Times’ Best Graphic Novels of 2020 list.