Casanova de Toro – Publisher/CEO of La Prensa Newspaper received the Don Quijote Award.

The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro Orlando and the Hispanic Business Initiative Fund (HBIF) announced Dec. 2, Dora Casanova de Toro, Publisher/CEO of La Prensa Newspaper, will receive the Don Quijote Award for Lifetime Achievement. The 11th Annual Don Quijote Awards ceremony will be held Dec. 6, 2008, at the Walt Disney’s World Showplace Pavilion at Epcot.

The Don Quijote Awards is the premier business and professional recognition event for the Hispanic community in Central Florida. The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the HBIF host this annual award ceremony to recognize the most outstanding Hispanic professionals and entrepreneurs of the year.

“When you do things with love and care, you don’t expect any reward,” Casanova de Toro said. “I feel a lot of people have had a part in our success.”

Dora Casanova de Toro and her late husband, Dr. Manuel A. Toro, founded La Prensa in 1981, which soon became the premier Spanish newsweekly in Central Florida, reaching a weekly circulation of 52,000 copies in Orlando and Tampa. She remembers her husband as a visionary: “He strongly believed that the growing Hispanic community in Orlando needed a publication to address their interests and La Prensa was his achievement.”

La Prensa Newspaper was acquired in Jan. 2006 by impreMedia LLC, the nation’s leading Hispanic news and information company in online and print, whose publications include La Opinión in Los Angeles and El Diario La Prensa in New York.