Mauricio Ospina came to Canada in 1991 with no English. His first: cleaning restaurants. On May 27, 2010 and in recognition for his continued community work, he met the Prime Minister of Canada at his Ottawa office. The Rt. Hon. Harper also asked Ospina to put together and bring to Ottawa, for the first time, a delegation of award-winning influential Hispanics. The delegation was formally recognized at Canada’s Parliament as guests of the Prime Minister.
He is positioning the Hispanic community as “Canada’s Creative Class” and is working on a declaration of April as Ontario’s Heritage Month at the Federal level, as well as on procurement, employment and volunteering opportunities for Hispanics before and during the 2015 Pan-American Games in Toronto. His latest initiative is to have Hispanics ‘own” the Pan-American Villa (home of the athletes for the Pan-Am games) by purchasing ten percent of the 2,100 residential units that will be sold to the public. He raised these and other issues with the Prime Minister during the meeting in Ottawa.
Ospina works an International Marketing Consultant for the Ontario Government helping companies export into the competitive U.S. market. His forty+ trade missions have produced business deals and consistent client satisfaction ratings of well over 80%.
Ospina’s other passion is his Hispanic community. He has personally assisted hundred of Hispanic immigrants, led several successful fundraising campaigns and sits on industry and community committees. In 2001, he founded and led until 2004 the still active Canadian Colombian Professional Association. In 2005, he joined the five-people committee that led to Statistics Canada’s “Profile of the Hispanic Community in Canada”, demonstrating the presence of 741,760 Hispanics (initial Census 2006 count: 350,000). In 2005, he launched and led until 2009 the first magazine for professionals and businesspeople Factor Hispano. In 2009, he co-founded Hispanotech.ca, the first association of Hispanics in Canada’s IT sector. Since 2007, he runs the community’s most important program: the “10 most Influential Hispanic Canadians’, a national awards program whose 30 winners to date come from five Canadian provinces representing thirteen countries of origin. The judges include past winners, and executives and journalists from Canada’s mainstream.
Ospina is a Fellow at York University’s Stong College and belongs to MayTree Foundation’s Speakers Bureau, was a finalist to the prestigious ‘Ontario Premier's Award’, and is a member of Ryerson University’s Golden Key and of Seneca’s ‘Most Distinguished Alumni’. He wrote for the University of Toronto's book about the political participation of Latin Americans in Canada and was interviewed for Andrea Mandel-Campbell’s book “Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson”. He has discussed with federal ministers Hispanic issues and has been interviewed by Globe & Mail, Toronto Star and CBC, and is frequently quoted or interviewed by most Hispanic media.