Cultures come together as four are honored
Leaders in the local Hispanic community recognized at the second annual Hispanic Heritage Awards at SUNY Ulster.
Leaders in Ulster County’s Hispanic community were recognized during the county’s second annual Hispanic Heritage Awards ceremony Monday at SUNY Ulster.
The honorees were Maria Elena Ferrer-Harrington, Noe Del Cid, Dolores Quiles and Alexandra Baer.
“We are fortunate to have an incredible Hispanic population in Ulster County that contributes so much to our local economy and social fabric, and it is a privilege to be able to honor these exceptional leaders,” County Executive Michael Hein said at the ceremony.
Ferrer-Harrington is HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley’s director of community engagement and also executive director of Humanamente, a diversity and inclusion consulting organization. She also is chairwoman of the Athena Network New York, a psychosocial support network of social services and health and mental health services for immigrants experiencing psychological challenges
related to the migratory process; and a member of the county Human Rights Commission.
Del Cid is a father, yogi, investor and entrepreneur with a focus on green business. He earned his real estate license at age 19 and opened his first restaurant at 26. He founded an apparel company, Peace Nation, that focuses on sustainable fabrics and later opened Peace Nation Café in Midtown Kingston.
Quiles is an educator who, in the early 1980s, was a kindergarten and first grade teacher in a yearround, bilingual, bicultural, inner-city public school in the Los Angeles School District. She later moved to Long Island, where she was director of La Union Hispanica in Central Islip. She began teaching at SUNY Ulster (then called Ulster County Community College) in 1991 as an adjunct professor of Englishas-a-second-language,
and in 1999 became a full-time member of the faculty and an ESL teacher and program director.
Baer, an artist, is director of the Unison Arts and Learning Center in New Paltz. The not-for-profit organization is dedicated to enriching cultural life and community in the region by making high-quality arts, performances and educational experiences accessible to all.