Addie Coral Romero becomes the newest member to join the eight-person Board of Directors for the nonprofit San Miguel Community Foundation.
Addie Coral Romero Joins San Miguel Community Foundation Board
By Gregory Gunter
The San Miguel Community Foundation boasts the tag line “We Live Here, We Give Here,” and in keeping with that tradition, the foundation constantly strives to expand its Board with active, bicultural local full-time residents of San Miguel.
Their newest addition to theBoard of Directors, Addie Coral Romero, proves a perfect match for all those qualifications! Originally from Puerto Rico and clearly fluent in Spanish, Addie has been a proven businesswoman and resident of San Miguel for nearly eight years.
For 30 years, Addie proved her mettle as the hugely successful publisher of Puerto Rico’s Hotel & Tourism Association hardcover tourism book titled Bienvenidos, with 200,000 copies placed in over 12,000 hotel rooms throughout Puerto Rico. She then started the softcover pocket guide Places to Go, publishing 300,000 copies annually of this guide that promoted all the islands of Puerto Rico.
Addie’s 30-year run as a Puerto Rico publisher ended with a successful sale to Verizon, who then bought out her publishing company and allowed her to follow her dream: a move to San Miguel de Allende. Soon after her arrival, Addie realized that San Miguel—like Puerto Rico-was bilingual tourism destination ripe for a guide to the local communities, events, cultural, history and shopping.
In 2011, Addie began publishing the local hardcover hotel book La Magia de Mexico, a bilingual guide to the region, focusing heavily on San Miguel de Allende, Queretaro and Guanajuato. It was with this book that your author first met Addie, serving as the lead writer for the book’s content focused on San Miguel. It was truly a labor of love for us both, writing and publishing about the pueblo we both called our new home!
Addie published La Magia de Mexico for three years before realizing that retirement was far more fun than meeting deadlines. She now enjoys investing time in entertaining and cooking—ask for her piñon recipe, the only one in San Miguel—and expanding her culinary horizons with additional cooking classes. Raised on the water, boating has always been a hobby but one she gladly forsake to enjoy the lifestyle of San Miguel.
Addie becomes the 8th member of SMCF’s Board of Directors, who includeDr. Salvador Eduardo Quiroz Saenz, Ma. Guadalupe Alvarez Brunel, Lic. Maria Teresa Garcia Dobarganes Barlow, Lic. Mary Ann Amparo Ramirez Garcia, Kathleen Mann, and Freddy Sargent York.It was an introduction by a friend of SMCF President Donna Foudray that led to Addie joining the board. As Addie admits, she likes the transparency of the SMCF financials and quickly agreed to support the organization
SMCF recently issued their fall grants—issued twice a year—to nonprofit organizations that submitted grant applications, and the SMCF board continues its mission of giving grants to those in need in our community. Their stories are heartwarming—I’ve experienced several personally—and to learn more about their mission, visit their web site at SanMiguelCommunityFoundation.org.
