Artist, abundantly talented advertising executive and creative director and a great advocate of multi-culturalism, Lionel is quite a guy. We first met him sitting humbly in the back of a workshop at our Adweek Creative Seminar. At the time he was Chairman of DMB&B/Américas, a network of 23 ad agencies in the U.S. and Latin America with billings of $500 million, representing Coca-Cola, Burger King, Anheuser Busch, American Airlines, 23 Procter & Gamble brands, Western Union and Sprint. He quickly went to the front of the class.

Prior to Darcy, Lionel founded Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates (now Bromley Communications), the largest U.S. Hispanic ad agency. In 1995 Lionel and DMB&B/Américas partnered with Paradigm Network (forerunner of Cyllabus and Red Dot Americas) to produce LatinExpo, the first Latin Marketing Expo. Lionel later headed up Garcia•LKS, the Southwest’s largest independent Hispanic advertising agency.

Lionel was named “One of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America” by Time Magazine in July of 2005. He was a media consultant for President George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign, Hispanic Media Consultant in six presidential campaigns beginning in 1980 and media advisor in over 100 political campaigns. He is the author of The Americano Dream: How Latinos Can Achieve Success in Business and in Life, published in 1998 by Dutton. Currently, Sosa has authored a second book titled, Think and Grow Rich, a Latino Choice for the Napoleon Hill Foundation to be published by Random House in June of 2006.

Lionel was named to the Texas Business Hall of Fame and was selected as one of the 25 Most Influential Texans by Texas Monthly magazine.  He received the Role Model Award for Diversity from the American Advertising Federation of New York.

Currently, Lionel is a member of the Board of Directors of ACT (American College Testing) and has served on the Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System, on the board of directors of The Hispanic Scholarship Fund, Bank of America, Texas, Taco Cabana and National Convenience Stores. He has served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University of the Incarnate Word and as a member of the Board of Directors of Sesame Workshop, creators of Sesame Street. He chaired both the United Way of San Antonio and the San Antonio Symphony and served on Eastman Kodak’s External Diversity Advisory Panel.

In the spring of 2001, Lionel was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Most recently, Lionel was awarded an honorary PHD in Humanities from the University of the Incarnate Word.