Mayor Julian Castro accepts to be Keynote Speaker at 19th Annual Eagle Pass Business Journal Awards

America’s most dynamic and rising political star, Mayor Julian Castro of the City of San Antonio, Texas, has officially accepted the Eagle Pass Business Journal’s invitation to be the Keynote Speaker at the 19th Annual Eagle Pass Business Journal Awards, announced Ricardo E. Calderon, Publisher.

“We are extremely honored and excited Mayor Castro has accepted to come to Eagle Pass and the Texas Middle Rio Grande region to share his visionary and progressive ideas regarding public and private partnerships for building a better society for everyone,” Calderon said. ” We are very fortunate to have a national and international figure such as Mayor Julian Castro to headline the 19th Annual Eagle Pass Business Journal Awards on Saturday, March 30th, in Eagle Pass,” Calderon added.

Mayor Castro’s political leadership shined brightest at the 2012 Democratic Party National
Convention as the keynote speaker in Charlotte, North Carolina, prompting the Dallas
Morning News to name him the 2012 Texan of the Year.

A 38-year-old San Antonio native, Mayor Julián Castro is the youngest mayor of a Top 50
American city. First elected on May 9, 2009, Mayor Castro handily won re-election in 2011
with nearly 82 percent of the vote.

Throughout his tenure, Mayor Castro has focused on attracting well-paying jobs in 21st
century industries, positioning San Antonio to be a leader in the New Energy Economy and
raising educational attainment across the spectrum. In 2011, the Milken Institute ranked San
Antonio the nation’s top-performing local economy.

Mayor Castro created SA2020, a community-wide visioning effort turned nonprofit that
has galvanized thousands of San Antonians around a simple, but powerful vision for San
Antonio ¬– to create a brainpower community that is the liveliest city in the nation.

Under his leadership, the city in 2010 opened Café College, a one-stop center offering
high-quality guidance on college admissions, financial aid and standardized test preparation
to any student in the San Antonio area. In its first year, Café College served more than 5,000
area students, spurring an expansion of the facility in 2011.

In November 2012, Mayor Castro led a voter-approved public referendum that will expand
high-quality Pre-K services to more than 22,000 San Antonio four-year-olds over the next
eight years.

Mayor Castro also has brought a sense of urgency to revitalizing the city’s urban core,
including the underserved East Side of San Antonio, by initiating the “Decade of Downtown”
and approving a series of incentives to encourage inner city investment. These efforts have
spurred plans for the construction of more than 2,400 housing units in the center city by
2014.

In March 2010, Mayor Castro joined executives from Google and Twitter in being named
to the World Economic Forum’s list of Young Global Leaders. Later that year, Time
magazine placed him on its “40 under 40” list of rising stars in American politics. Mayor
Castro also serves on the board of directors of the National League of Cities, is a member of
the Inter-American Dialogue and is an Aspen-Rodel Fellow. In addition to his community
service, Mayor Castro has taught courses at The University of Texas at San Antonio, Trinity
University, and St. Mary’s University.

Mayor Castro earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University with honors and
distinction in 1996 and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2000. In 2001, at the
age of 26, Castro became the youngest elected city councilman at that time in San Antonio
history.

He is married to Erica Lira Castro, an elementary school teacher, and they are the proud
parents of Carina, born in 2009.

To accommodate Mayor Castro’s extremely busy schedule, the 19th Annual Eagle Pass
Business Journal Awards has been rescheduled from February 9th to March 30th at 7:30
p.m. at the El Residencial Reception Hall in Eagle Pass, Texas, Calderon said.

Corporate sponsorships and tables and tickets to the 19th Annual Eagle Pass
Business Journal Awards are still available on a first-come, first-served basis at the
offices of the Eagle Pass Business Journal, located at 438 N. Monroe Street, in Eagle
Pass or by calling (830) 757-2705 or emailing us at epbj@sbcglobal.net.