Still bringing people together

Piñatas, goodie bags, and cake. Getting the kids organized and making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Maria Lupe Hernandez-Muñiz might use those simple terms to explain what became a career in event strategy, marketing and community building.

When Hernandez-Muñiz, then a young mother in Southern California, saw a job opening with a Hispanic media company looking for someone to handle grassroots community events, she didn't have the professional background the job description seemed to call for, but she recognized the work outlined in the job description.

“I said, ‘I’ve done this,’” she said. “I’ve been a party planner. I’m the party planner of the family.”

It turned out she had. Years later, that instinct for bringing people together has followed Hernandez-Muñiz to Las Cruces, where she operates Powerhouse Diva LLC and serves on the board of the Las Cruces Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The chamber named Powerhouse Diva its 2025 Small Business of the Year.

The relationship between Hernandez-Muñiz and the chamber is a natural one. Prior to becoming a board member here, she worked with 23 chambers of commerce during her career in California.

She learned that chambers could be more than places to exchange business cards. They were places to build relationships, create partnerships and, perhaps most importantly, listen to what businesses were saying they needed.

“I understand the power of chambers and what they could do for business, for community as well,” she said. “That’s really one of the things that I fell in love with — the relationships, the partnerships, the visibility.”

So, when Hernandez-Muñiz moved to Las Cruces three years ago, she knew where she wanted to connect. She contacted the Hispanic Chamber; told its leaders she was bringing her business from California to New Mexico and shared her vision for an event she hoped to produce locally.

The Chamber invited her to set up a booth at Hispanic Heritage Day at New Mexico State University, where she could promote the event and begin making connections. She became an active member and was invited to join the board last October. When committees and projects were discussed in January, she volunteered to chair special projects. It was familiar territory.

Hernandez-Muñiz grew up in Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood that provided the backdrop to a childhood she now sees from a very different vantage point. Gunshots and helicopters were part of the noise around her. The unrest surrounding Rodney King happened nearby. At the time, she said, it was simply the world she knew.

“I never thought, looking back, a completely different life that I’m living now here in Las Cruces,” she said. “Never did I ever imagine that I would be an entrepreneur.”

Entrepreneurship was always a bit closer than she realized. Her father came to the United States from Colima, Mexico, eventually settling in Los Angeles and starting two businesses. Hernandez-Muñiz remembers when he left a stable job and told the family they would be without health benefits for a while. Even as a child, she understood the risk.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s scary,’” she said. “You’re supporting a family. But if he believes in himself so much that he’s going to make his dream come true.”

He did. Her father operated a landscaping business and a railroad maintenance company. And the businesses became something of a family enterprise. Hernandez-Muñiz and her sisters folded pamphlets, typed invoices and helped him figure out new technology.

“When faxes first came out, he came home with a fax,” she recalled. “‘We’re going to need this for my business. I don’t exactly know how to run it, but you girls are going to help me.’”

She didn't recognize it as business training then.

“I understood I was supporting a dream,” she said.

Hernandez-Muñiz started college at East Los Angeles College, but becoming a mother changed the path. She needed to work, and the position with the Hispanic media company gave her an opportunity to begin building a career.

Grassroots events grew into community affairs, marketing and business outreach. She built a street team covering Southern and Central California and began taking the company into Chambers, conferences and business events. Along the way, she learned social media, digital marketing and other pieces of the work largely by doing them.

More importantly, she learned what could happen when businesses and communities were deliberately brought together. That experience eventually became the foundation for Powerhouse Diva.

Hernandez-Muñiz launched the company during the COVID-19 pandemic, initially looking for a way to help businesses and organizations continue reaching people when gathering in person wasn't possible. She turned to virtual events, including a multi-day summit bringing Latina wellness leaders together to talk about family, self-care and continuing to operate businesses amid the pandemic.

“I said, ‘This is it. I have to do something more with this,’” she said.

Powerhouse Diva now combines the event strategy and marketing work Hernandez-Muñiz does for clients with something she rediscovered after coming to Las Cruces — live community events.

One of the first was Día de los Muertos Las Cruces: Arte, Música y Cultura.

After years of producing events across California, Hernandez-Muñiz had been ready for a break from the pace. But in Las Cruces, she began to miss that part of her work.

Día de los Muertos was particularly important to her. She wanted to create an event that would connect younger generations with the culture behind it while incorporating art and music. The reaction surprised her. People approached her afterward to thank her for bringing something different to the community.

“I never realized how much of a connection I was missing,” she said.

Connection continues to drive both sides of Hernandez-Muñiz's work.

Through Powerhouse Diva, she wants to help businesses think beyond simply putting something on social media and hoping people see it. She talks instead about strategy, creating visibility, finding the right audience and giving people a reason to connect with a business.

Through the Hispanic Chamber, she sees an opportunity to put that experience to work for a larger business community. As special projects chair, she has begun looking at additional ways the chamber can provide businesses with resources. One effort started with virtual programming that Hernandez-Muñiz hopes can eventually grow into a larger business expo, with the programming continuing to change around what local businesses say they need.

It is an approach that matches the way Hernandez-Muñiz built her own career. There is something familiar there.

“I might not have the degree, but I have the experience,” she said. “I have the will to do it, and I figured it out along the way.”

Years ago in Los Angeles, her father came home with a fax machine he didn't know how to operate because his growing business needed one. His daughters figured it out.

Today, Hernandez-Muñiz is still figuring things out, except now, whether through Powerhouse Diva or around a Hispanic Chamber table, she is often helping someone else build the dream.