Latino tech and media innovator Bill Gato was named CEO of Latino press release distribution service Hispanicize Wire on Monday, rejoining the Latino-centric PR and wire service firm that he helped put together years ago.

Hispanicize Wire is a Miami-based press release wire platform serving small businesses, marketing agencies, non-profits, and news media with a Latino audience.

Gato is reuniting with the former executive management team and Latino wire service veterans like Manny Ruiz, Yosmay Valdivia, Cristy Clavijo-Kish, Katherine Johnson and Danny Correa as CEO of Hispanicize Wire.

"Bill brings an amazing set of digital marketing skills, talent and proven leadership that on the eve of several major Hispanicize Wire service innovations will guide the company to its next evolutionary step," said Manny Ruiz, turned the CEO reigns to Gato on Monday and will now serve as the company's chairman and senior partner. "Hispanicize Wire clients can expect to see Bill's stamp of excellence and service in everything that we're doing and are about to announce."

Gato has a long history of entrepreneurship with high-tech and media companies that cater to a Latino audience: he co-founded the nation's first network of Hispanic newspapers online, called the Hispanic Digital Network, which transformed into Hispanic PR Wire and was sold in 2008 to PRNewswire for $5.5 million. Gato is also the founder and President at his own ad agency, Gato Advertising. Previous to his co-founding of the Hispanic Digital Network, Gato was a radio columnist at the Miami Herald and creative director of the Spanish Broadcasting System. In his free time, he's a drum instructor at Miami-Dade College.

Gato first re-joined the Hispanicize brand of companies in 2011, when he was named the editorial director of Hispanicize digital (Hispanicize.com) - a social media, marketing, and entertainment platform, which re-launched with Gato at the editorial helm and focused on more original news, multimedia, technology features and interviews with industry leaders. Now taking over as CEO of Hispanicize Wire, Gato sees opportunities to reignite the wire service to serve and reach an ever-broadening Latino audience online.

"In an inbound marketing landscape now dominated by search, social media, online video and mobile technology, the traditional wires have not kept up with the needs of the booming U.S. Hispanic market," said now-CEO Gato. "We're intent on -- once again -- revolutionizing the Latino wire and helping brands and businesses of all sizes tell their stories to the Latino market in the most innovative and effective ways."

Some of the initiatives Gato seeks to continue include:

  • Low Cost, Flat Rate Pricing and ZERO Overage
  • Comprehensive Targeting of Hispanic Media and Bloggers
  • Exclusive, In-depth Hispanic Social Media Reach
  • A Full Scale Multimedia Platform
  • Expanding Online Reach
  • Industry-Specific Distributions
  • SEO-enhanced and Socially Savvy Releases

Hispanicize Wire, under Gato, also hints of new initiatives that the company is "about to announce," though no details have been divulged yet.