Keynote Speaker Bio

Henry Cisneros

From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Cisneros served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet, Secretary Cisneros was assigned America’s housing and community development portfolio. He is credited with initiating the revitalization of many of the nation’s public housing developments and with formulating policies that have contributed to today’s record homeownership rate. In 1981 Mr. Cisneros became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. During his four terms in office, he helped rebuild the city’s economic base and spurred the creation of jobs through massive infrastructure and downtown improvements, marking San Antonio as one of the nation’s most progressive cities.

Henry Cisneros is Chairman of the CityView companies, community-building firms dedicated to producing workforce homes in America’s cities. CityView’s mission is to work with the nation’s leading homebuilders to create “villages within cities,” priced within the range of average families, designed to honor community traditions, and financed to provide homeownership options for residents of the nation’s cities. In order to complete that mission, CityView identifies sites, plans neighborhoods, organizes and develops land, and finances the building of homes.

From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Cisneros was president and chief operating officer of Univision Communications, the Spanish-language broadcaster, which has become the fifth-most-watched television network in the nation.