Gisel Ruiz has been promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer for Walmart U.S. In this position, she will be responsible for the company’s U.S. operations, which cover more than 3,800 stores and include Supercenters, discount stores, Neighborhood Markets and Walmart Express formats. Ruiz will continue reporting to Walmart U.S. President and CEO Bill Simon and all three regional business unit presidents will report to her.

Ruiz was most recently executive vice president of People for Walmart U.S. where she was responsible for the human resources and store innovation organizations supporting more than 1.2 million associates. She helped transform the company’s approach to talent management and leveraged technology to drive process changes that increased efficiencies and improved the customer and associate experience.

“I’m incredibly excited to see Gisel’s impact on the stores,” said Simon. “She started in our stores, ran stores and, more importantly, understands the perspective of our associates like no one else on our leadership team. That’s invaluable. For nearly 20 years, Gisel has proven herself to be a strong and capable operator, manager, teacher, retail executive and role model for our culture.”

Adriana Gallego

  The National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) named Adriana Gallego as its new deputy director. During her tenure as director of Strategic Initiatives at the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Gallego developed programs, grants, partnerships and services in support of arts organizations, artists, universities/schools, community groups and government agencies She served on many advisory boards and committees including the Transportation Enhancement Review Committee, the Asset Building for Artists of Color Advisory Board, the Flagstaff Cultural Partners Arts Advisory Board and the Arizona Public Art Network. As a painter, Gallego’s artwork is forged from ideals about equality and understanding rooted in the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, with sensibilities born out of her upbringing alongside the United States-Mexico border. She received the Border-Ford Bi-national Painting Award and has completed several mural commissions in Arizona and California.   “In my experience, NALAC’s guiding principles are not only inspiring, but they are transformative in practice,” said Gallego. “I very much look forward to contributing to this trajectory in the service of cultivating a vibrant, diverse Latino arts and culture sector.”

In the news

Gina Rodriguez

Gina Rodriguez stars in the title role of the musical-drama, Filly Brown opposite Lou Diamond Philips and Edward James Olmos, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2012 in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category. Chicago raised, Rodriguez is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with 4 years of theatre training at both the Atlantic Theatre Company and Experimental Theatre Wing, working with both David Mamet and William H. Macy, and Experimental Theatre Wing, under Rosemary Quinn.

Her television credits include, guest stars on ABC’s Happy Ending, Fox/WBTV’s Johnny Zero, NBC’s Law & Order, ABC Family’s 10 Things I Hate About You, CBS/Bruckheimer’s Eleventh Hour, recurring on Lifetime’s Army Wives, and co-starring on MTV’s made for television features My Super Psycho Sweet 16 (parts 1 and 2). Other films credits include: Our Family Wedding opposite America Ferrera, independent Tiny Dancer directed by Eva Husson, Osvaldos (short film) directed by Randy Wilkins which screened in festivals for ABFF, NY HBO Latino Film Fest, Chicago International Film Fest, naming Gina winner of “Best Actor” award at the First Run Film Festival in NY and Osvaldos was named one of the Five.

Victoria Alonso

Victoria Alonso is the executive vice president of Visual Effects and Post Production for Marvel Studios. Alonso served as co-producer on “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2” with director Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor,” Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger” and is now executive-producing “Marvel Studios’ The Avengers” for writer/director Joss Whedon. Alonso’s career began at the nascency of the visual effects industry, when she served as a commercial VFX producer. From there, she VFX- produced numerous feature films, working with such directors as Ridley Scott (“Kingdom of Heaven”), Tim Burton (“Big Fish”) and Andrew Adamson (“Shrek”), to name a few. Her future projects with Marvel are “Iron Man III” and “Thor II.”