Lourdes Mateo de Acosta has held senior management roles at four of the top international public relations firms worldwide and currently serves as partner and executive vice president at H&M Communications. She has more than 19 years of experience in high-level strategic counseling, media relations, corporate communications, special events, and crisis communications.

As partner and executive vice president of H&M Communications, she currently oversees national U.S. Hispanic and regional Latin American campaigns for clients such as Comcast, XIX Entertainment (Producers of ¡Q'Viva! The Chosen) and Crackle (a Sony Pictures Television company), as well as regional programs for F. Gaviña & Sons, makers of Don Francisco's and La Llave coffees.

In 2004, Lourdes founded de la Group PR. There she managed a variety of U.S. Hispanic and Latin America focused programs, including multi-country programs for blue chip clients such as Yahoo! and PayPal, as well as U.S.-focused general market and regional efforts for The Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau and Burger King.

Previously, Lourdes headed Edelman's Miami office, where she also directed the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau North America program, as well as managed the annual Bacardi Cup sailing regatta and special events for the Nasdaq-100 Open tennis tournament (now named the Sony Ericsson Open). As part of the company's Diversity group, she also handled Hispanic focused programs for various blue-chip consumer brands including Acuvue, Dove, AXE deodorant, AstraZeneca, Cordis among others.

While at Weber Shandwick Worldwide (WSW), she played an integral role in the formation of GrupoLink, the agency's U.S. Hispanic and Latin America operations. There she managed communications programs for multinational companies including: Lucent spin-off Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Telefonica and United Airlines, as well as for Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company. She also managed consumer-driven programs for FPL and Hershey's, as well as crisis work for Royal & Son Alliance and United Airlines during the 9/11 terrorists attacks.

Prior to that, Lourdes served as account executive and later senior account executive at Fleishman-Hillard. Her professional career began in 1993 at Ketchum Public Relations. Over the years, she has also handled sports and entertainment related work for Reebok, Women's Sports Foundation, The Home Depot and Miller Brewing Co.

Lourdes resides in Miami, is fluent in Spanish and English (with a working knowledge of Portuguese) and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Central Florida in Orlando.