Dr. Robert Renteria

Successful Businessman Civic Leader/International Award Winning Latino Author

Dr. Robert Renteria is using his memoir “From the Barrio to the Board Room, Mi Barrio and Little Barrio” with youth across America to replace violence, delinquency, gangs, and drugs with education, pride, accomplishment, and self-esteem. Renteria came from humble beginnings, growing up in an impoverished East L.A. barrio. His family was abandoned by his heroin and alcohol-addicted father. At the age of six, Robert was involved in a carnival accident that resulted in serious head trauma and three arduous years of rehabilitation to recover his motor skills. As a teenager, he became involved with a tough street crowd, used and dealt drugs, dropped out of high school, was shot at and stabbed, and went from one dead-end job to another. After learning that his estranged father had died in a halfway house on skid-row, Dr. Robert resolved to make better choices in his life. He returned to school, joined the military, and after honorably serving our country for over seven years as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army, he moved to Chicago. Searching for a job where he could prove himself, he talked his way into a position with a commercial laundry management and sales company that eventually led to his becoming corporate Vice President of a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. Having the success he had been seeking, he was convinced to strike off on his own, opening and operating several successful businesses.

Dr. Robert Renteria has now dedicated his life to sharing his story with thousands of others so that they, too, can help break the vicious cycle of poverty through hard work, determination, and education. His books “From the Barrio to the Board Room, Mi Barrio and Little Barrio” and the accompanying FREE curriculum for schools and churches, are forming our “leaders of tomorrow” by helping them to find their identity, establish core values, set goals for themselves, prioritize education, and strive to reach their full potential.

Dr. Renteria has been the keynote speaker at the Hispanic Heritage Reception for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, the UIC Pavilion (over 8500 people), and the Rosemont Horizon, he has also presented at the Illinois Association of School Social Workers, Illinois Probation Officers Conference, National Teachers and Principals Conference, Illinois School Boards and Administrators Joint Annual Conference, National Association of Hispanic Publications Annual Conference, McDonald’s Hamburger University, General Motors, The Boeing Corporation, General Mills Corporation, the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association Annual Conference, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation and hundreds of middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities across the country.

He has been profiled in major media, including The Chicago Sun Times, Investor’s Business Daily, WGN Midday News, Univision, La Raza, Hoy, Extra, WGN Adelante Chicago, FOX News, WGN Chicago’s Very Own, more than three dozen radio stations, including Chicago Public Radio and numerous newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Dr. Renteria is supported by political figures (at the local, state, and national levels), business owners, corporations, University Professors, and middle and high school teachers, principals, and superintendents who share his universal message that everyone has the right to live the American Dream through education, determination, and hard work!