Lourdes Barroso de Padilla
Lourdes Barroso de Padilla has an extensive background in youth development and leadership. She has
served with City Year, an education focused organization dedicated to helping students and schools
succeed for more than 20 years. Barroso de Padilla has helped to found five of City Year’s twenty nine
sites across the country, and has worked at all levels of the organization. She is a certified Youth
Development Trainer and was awarded the Hewlett Packard Alumni Leadership Award in for her impact
and service to the organization.
Barroso de Padilla is a graduate of Project Diversity, Leadership Columbus, and the Academy for
Leadership and Governance Executive Fellowship program. She has served as a Commissioner with the
Ohio Latino Affairs Commission, as a founding member of the Create Columbus Commission and as a
board member for Directions for Youth and Families and a member of the United Way’s Education
Impact Council and Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Currently she serves as a board member of the
YWCA Columbus, a member of MORPC Regional Policy Roundtable, Advisory Board Member for the
Columbus Chapter of the New Leaders Council, member of The Columbus Police Chief’s Advisory Panel
and a member of the Columbus City Schools Community Engagement Committee.
As the Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement for City Year Inc. Barroso de Padilla oversees the
organizations major gifts, corporate and grant programs. Since its inception more than a decade ago
Barroso de Padilla has been engaged and currently serves as the Director for the Latina Mentoring
Academy a unique professional development and mentoring program for Latinas in Central Ohio.
Barroso de Padilla was featured in the inaugural editions of The Women’s Book and Who’s Who in LatinoColumbus as well as WELD Ohio’s Women Welding the Way Calendar. She has been honored as one of Business First’s 40 under 40, and was named a Distinguished Hispanic Ohioan by the Ohio Commission on Latino Affairs. In November of 2021, Barroso de Padilla made history by becoming the first Latina to be elected as a member of the Columbus City Council.
Lourdes is a bilingual first generation Cuban-American who was born and raised on the eastside of
Columbus and is a product of the Columbus public school system. She resides with her husband,
Ernesto, and daughters, Eva and Valentina in Eastmoor.