Home, In Their Own Words: SVL Advisory Board Reflects

by Sergio Domeyko September 24, 2026

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This Hispanic Heritage Month, our Home series continues with four voices from SVL's Advisory Board, leaders who show up for community in boardrooms, classrooms, and neighborhoods across the Bay Area and beyond. We asked them the same question we've asked all month: what does “home” mean to you? Their answers took us from a childhood shaped by love and family to two cultures straddled since childhood, to a New Mexico kitchen simmering with red and green chile, to a community built because it needed to exist. Four reflections, four different roads to the same word.

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Home, In Their Own Words

Arnaldo Lopez

SVL Advisory Board · Technology Executive | Technology GTM Advisor

Home for me has always been where my heart is, close to those I love. Early in life, that meant my mom, my sister, my grandmother. Later, it evolved into my wife, my children, my closest friends. Home was never a building. It was the people who created it.

If I could describe the feeling of home in one word, it would be love. My home has always been where I feel the most love from family and friends.

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Sylvia Juárez-Magaña

SVL Advisory Board · Advising & Coaching Consultant, College Application Coach

Home to me is where roots are set, where you learn your family's history. I have straddled two cultures all my life: expected to learn English, determined to preserve my first language, Spanish. My responsibilities grew, first to my family, then to my community, then to my own success, and success became how I could represent my family to the world.

We can celebrate for a month, but our impact as comunidad reaches far beyond that, crossing every boundary our ancestors ever laid down.

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Antonio Humphreys

SVL Advisory Board · Passionate Business Leader | Board Director

I moved away from my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico almost thirty years ago, but I still make it back once or twice a year, missing the familiar accents, the local food, the high desert climate. Since then, I've had the chance to call Houston, the Bay Area, and even London home too, each place teaching me something new.

Here in the Bay Area, I seek out Hispanic and Latino-owned businesses, events, and volunteer opportunities. This comunidad brings me closer to where my family comes from, because we all find pride in our collective Latinidad.

If you asked me to describe home in one phrase? Red or green. It's our New Mexico chile, and depending on the day, I might ask for both.

 

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Anna Dapelo-Garcia

SVL Advisory Board · Founder, Lean In Latinas

For me, home has always been about more than a place. It's family, community, culture, that feeling of knowing you belong. I was born in San José and have spent my life in the Bay Area; today I call Mountain View home. But home is also connected to where my family came from, and the values and traditions passed down to me.

As I've gotten older, my definition of home has expanded. Home is also the communities we create, and the people who make space for us to be fully ourselves. That's part of why I founded Lean In Latinas: to build a space where Latinas could come together, learn from one another, and know that our voices matter.

If I had to describe home in one word, it would be belonging. Home is where you don't have to prove that you belong. You simply do.

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Stories like this don't tell themselves.

SVL has spent over a decade making the invisible visible, celebrating Latino excellence, naming hard truths, and calling our comunidad to action. Independent Latino journalism only survives when the community it serves decides it's worth protecting.

There are two ways to stand with us:

Are you a Latino professional, entrepreneur, or leader ready to be celebrated? Become a Cultura Ambassador, SVL's official community membership for Latino leaders who are ready to have their story told, their work amplified, and their excellence made visible.

Cultura Ambassador: https://svlatino.com/collections/join-our-tribe

Want to support our mission? Become an Amigo de SVL. Your support keeps our journalism independent, our stories free, and our #CreoEnTi programs and community events alive.

Amigo de SVL: https://svlatino.com/collections/join-our-tribe/products/amigo-de-svl

 

Juntos Adelante. Because silence is complicity. And so is inaction.

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