May 12, 2008

Yrma Rico, the daughter of Mexican immigrants whose career began at a Fresno television station and led her to become an equity holder in a major national communications company, will be the fall Entrepreneur in Residence at the Lyles Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at California State University, Fresno.

She will be in Fresno from Nov. 6 to 9 to meet with students, faculty and community groups, and will be the keynote speaker at the Latina Women's Conference sponsored by the Central California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Rico, who lives in Denver, is an equity holder of Entravision Communications Corporation, a diversified Spanish-language media company. The company's combination of television, radio, outdoor and publishing operations reaches approximately 80 percent of Hispanic consumers across the United States and the border markets of Mexico. She also is president and a stockholder in Weber BMW in Fresno.

Entravision is the top owner of affiliates of the top-rated Univision television network, with stations in 18 of the nation's top-50 Hispanic markets.

The publicly traded company also operates the nation's largest centrally programmed Spanish-language radio network, which serves 23 markets via 57 owned-and-operated stations and 47 affiliates. It also publishes El Diario/La Prensa in New York, the nation's oldest major Spanish-language newspaper.

Rico started her TV career at Fresno's KFTV, Channel 21, a Spanish International Network station that was bought by Univision. She was an account executive in Fresno and later moved to Providence, R.I., and Dallas, where she was the national sales manager. She was general manager of Univision's Denver station from 1992 to 2003.

She is a member of the several boards, including Jones International Cable, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Broadcast Association, Denver Art, Culture and Film Foundation and Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium.

For more information contact the Lyles Center at 559.294.2045.