KABC Orange County Reporter Jessica De Nova’s passion for story-telling and digging for unique stories stems from her own American experience. She grew up in Santa Ana, California as an undocumented immigrant after leaving Mexico at three years of age. Throughout her life, she shared her story and often found support from her teachers, friends and community. She learned at an early age the power of sharing one’s reality with the world and the importance of living in the United States, sin olvidar sus raices. Her parents taught her— success comes with hard work and dedication.
Jessica graduated from California State University Long Beach with a Bachelor of Science in biology. Her career in journalism began in 2012 in Southern Oregon where her husband worked as a firefighter. While with the CBS affiliate, KTVL, Jessica covered President Barack Obama’s visit to Roseburg following the Umpqua Community College shooting. In 2016, Jessica hosted Morning Edition with Jefferson Public Radio, became a United States citizen, voted for the first time and ran her first marathon. She then made her way from the Cascades to the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she was the bureau reporter for the NBC affiliate, KPNX— later transferring to the station in Phoenix. In 2017, Jessica was in Las Vegas for coverage of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting and to Florida to report on Hurricane Irma.
Jessica is excited to be back home to raise her daughter around family and is always looking for recommendations on a good place for a run or walk where a stroller and dogs are welcome.
Patty Pulido Gonzalez is a senior relationship manager in the Inland Empire market for commercial banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Patty leads a team of banking specialists who work to understand her clients’ business needs. Under Patty’s leadership, her team proactively provides strategic guidance and financial solutions to help clients achieve their business and personal goals. She serves her business clients holistically, from providing workplace financial solutions to their employees, discussing an asset conversion cycle, or financing fixed or intangible assets.
Patty joined Bank of America in 2001 in leadership positions in Retail Banking and Mortgage Lending before becoming a relationship manager. Prior to joining the commercial banking division, Patty served as a consumer market manager, where she was responsible for managing a workforce of more than 200 employees and overseeing 15 financial centers. She was accountable for managerial responsibilities including leading a team, operations, staffing and customer service.
Patty obtained her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus on human resources at California Polytechnic University of Pomona.
Committed to her community, Patty volunteers with various non-profit organizations such as Feeding America and Promise Scholars. In addition, she is part of the Inland Empire’s community volunteer leadership team, which is dedicated to ensuring Bank of America is actively engaged and giving back to the local non-profit organizations. She also is engaged with the local Leadership, Education, Advocacy, and Development (LEAD) for Women chapter, which is dedicated to promoting professional women’s development throughout the bank.
Patty is currently resides in Ontario, California with her husband and two dogs.
Lynn Martin is a Senior Vice President in Global Information Security (GIS) at Bank of America. As part of the Cyber Client Engagement (CCE) team of GIS, she’s responsible for GIS external client engagements, and is focused on Bank of America Cyber Security Awareness and Education for all Bank of America lines of business. She works in conjunction with the Business Information Security Officers (BISO) to drive client focused engagements.
Previously, Lynn has served in several key roles across GIS including Sr. Business Information Security Officer, and Sr. Information Security Manager of Application Vulnerability Remediation and Access Control Testing.
Her career at Bank of America spans over 27 years and includes extensive roles throughout Global Technology & Operations. She is Six Sigma Green Belt certified, and an active member of The Executive Women’s Forum, Women Executives of Charlotte, the Charlotte chapter of Women in Technology & Operations (WITO) and Leadership Charlotte.
Lynn resides in Charlotte, NC with her family of rescued dogs.
Carmen Bermudez-Bracy currently serves as the Contract Compliance Accountability Administrator and Certification Officer for the Business Outreach Section at Metropolitan Water District. MWD is the nation’s largest water wholesale serving 19 million Southern California residents. The Business Outreach Program provides services to maximize contracting opportunities for regional, disabled veterans and small business owners in the Southland six counties that Metropolitan services. As MWD’s certification officer and as an advocate for small business owners, she provides important information about the benefits of certification and regional incentives and business networking. In her role as Contract Compliance Administration, MWD’s CCAP program tracks the compliance of using small businesses in construction contracts and professional agreements. MWD’s Contract Compliance Accountability Program has set benchmarks in the industry. She is a graduate of the Latina Executive Leadership Academy at USC, a partnership with the Marshall School of Business and has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and Leadership from the University of La Verne.
Gloria Burton is a Program Manager with Supplier Diversity & Development at Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the nations largest electric utility. As such, she is committed to working with diverse firms to strengthen their capabilities in order to grow and achieve success while delivering economic value to customers and communities.
Gloria has over 25 years of Supply Chain experience and has supported many organizational units across SCE as a Procurement Agent and Contract Manager.
Prior to joining Edison, Gloria worked for ARCO in various capacities managing multi-million dollar contracts within procurement and supplier diversity.
Gloria enjoys volunteering to support senior outreach activities at long term health care facilities and also passionate in promoting youth programs. She enjoys spending time with family and her granddaughter.
Gloria holds a Master's in Business Administration from University of Redlands. She earned a bachelor's degree in business management from Pepperdine University.
Sylvia works for the U.S. Small Business Administration, Orange County – Inland Empire District Office, her title is Economic Development Specialist and Women’s Business Outreach Representative. She has more than 20 years of experience in business development. Her marketing and outreach activities reach the tri-county area of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino. She is invited to speak on SBA Programs and Services by various organizations and TV networks like Univision.
Sylvia is tasked with participating at events that assist, counsel, and inform entrepreneurs and business owners to start, expand and run successful businesses.
Sylvia holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from USC, and M.A. degree from The American University in Washington, D.C., in International Economic Policy, Business, and Finance.
Sylvia is an active member of Toastmasters and she holds an Advanced Toastmaster Silver Certificate.
Drisha Melton is the Southern California Supplier Diversity Liaison for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Her responsibilities include promoting the CPUC’s programs and providing education and outreach necessary to raise awareness of various regulatory and legislative policies. She is committed to promoting consumer needs and protecting the public interest. She is utilized as a resource to build relationships with local government groups and to promote GO156, the CPUC’s supplier diversity program, which encourages greater economic opportunities for women, minority, and disable veteran business, LGBT enterprises.
Ms. Melton represents the CPUC as a member of the California Utilities Diversity Council, the Workforce, Education, and Training Task Force, an Operation Lifesaver trained Volunteer for Rail and Safety, and a member of the Utilities Supplier Diversity Roundtable; which facilitate the development of DBE’s in the wholesale power market.
Danetta Jackson is the Business Outreach Program Manager for the California Department of General Services, Office of Small Business and Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise Services. Her office focuses on educating small businesses (SBs) and disabled veteran business enterprises (DVBEs) to ensure they understand and are able to navigate the State's procurement system. In addition, her office provides contracting best practices training to state departments to assist them in meeting the mandated contracting goals of 25 percent to SBs and 3 percent to DVBEs.
Danetta is in charge of forging strategic collaborations with small business organizations and agencies at the private, local, state, and federal levels.
Danetta has over 25 years working in state government. She is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). In addition, she completed the Leadership for the Government Management and Executive Leadership Programs at CSUS and serves as a member of several advisory councils, to include: the University of California Small and Diverse Business Advisory, the California Small Business Development Center Advisory Board and the California Statewide Coalition on Diversity Initiatives.
Teresa Macias-Ruiz currently serves as a Bilingual Business Outreach Liaison at the Office of Small Business and Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise Services, California Department of General Services. In this role, she educates business owners about the benefits and opportunities of pursuing a Small Business (SB) certification, Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise (DVBE) certification, and contract opportunities with the state of California. Teresa previously worked as a substitute teacher at Washington Unified School District. Also, Teresa worked in various capacities in banking for about 20 years. Her background is in business and she holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Sacramento State University.
Daisy Marquez is the Senior Certification Analyst with the Supplier Clearinghouse. Daisy processes certifications for women, minority and LGBT-owned firms.
Susan Mathews is the Certification Director with the Supplier Clearinghouse. Susan has expertise in supplier diversity programs and diverse business certification processing.
Maria Molina Solano is the Executive Director for the National Latina Business Women’s Association, Inland Empire, a non-profit organization. She maintains an innate passion for the growing Latina Entrepreneur and the Latino Business Community in which she thrives at building the financial platform of community sponsorships to enable the success of the organization. Maria is also known for her diverse well rounded professional background in the banking industry with over 20 years experience to speak of.
Maria began her 20 year banking career with Wells Fargo as a teller working in two locations; Pasadena, and El Monte, California she then earned her way up to a personal banker, business banker then branch manager. As a branch manager she was tasked with the oversight of operations, sales and a staff of 30. While working on sales, she exceeded sales expectations which placed her in the Top 10 within district and Top 25 statewide.
Marias team successes include working as part of a team while at the Latin Business Association Institute (LBAI). The LBAI is a grass roots organization that serves as advocate for Latino Business of which she was a part of ascertaining funding in excess of $283 million in contracts for the Latino Business Community and $65.45 million for client business loans for expansion or start-up businesses. Was part of the team that worked to develop member programs through education increasing membership from 75 to over 1,600 members.
Communally she has participated as an advocate for the Hispanic population, having served on the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, Procurement & Education Committees, Los Angeles Unified School District, Procurement Advisory Board, Los Angeles Minority Business Opportunity Committee, Procurement, Access to capital, and Education Development, Chaired the Transportation Board Advisory Committee for the Los Angeles County MTA, and served as an Advisory Board Member focusing on procurement and access to capital for the Women’s Transportation Coalition.
