Lourdes Mateo de Acosta

Lourdes has held senior management roles at four of the top international public relations firms worldwide and currently serves as president/CEO of de la Group, a boutique public relations consultancy. She has 15 years of experience in high-level strategic counseling, media relations, corporate communications, consumer-driven marketing, special events and crisis communications experience, across U.S., U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets. Her broad marketing communications experience spans across a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, tourism and lifestyle, food and beverage, retail, packaged goods, telecommunications, technology, sports, media and entertainment.
Before launching de la Group, Lourdes headed Edelman's Miami office, where she spearheaded the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau North America program, as well as managed the annual Bacardi Cup sailing regatta and special events for the Nasdaq-100 Open tennis tournament. As part of the company’s Diversity group, She also handled Hispanic-focused programs for various blue-chip consumer brands including Acuvue, Dove, AXE deodorant, AstraZeneca, Cordis among others, as well as local Florida projects for The Mills Corporation, Wild Oats.

Immediately prior to joining Edelman, Lourdes was vice president of marketing and public relations for healthcare technology company Avisena. There she was a member of the executive board and instrumental in launching and marketing the company in South Florida.

While at Weber Shandwick Worldwide (WSW), she played an integral role in the formation of GrupoLink, the agency’s U.S. Hispanic and Latin America operation. There she managed communications programs for multinational companies including: Lucent spin-off Avaya Inc., Telefonica b2b, Zonafinanciera.com, Medtronic and United Airlines, among others. She also managed consumer-driven programs for FPL, Hersheys, M&M/Mars as well as crisis work for Royal & Son Alliance and United Airlines, where she assisted the airline during and after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and was part of their global crisis PR team.

Prior to that, Lourdes served as account executive and later senior account executive at Fleishman-Hillard. Her professional career began in 1993 at Ketchum Public Relations.
Lourdes holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of Central Florida.