Hugo Morales (radio)


Hugo Noé Morales is the Executive Director and co-founder of Radio Bilingüe Inc., the national Latino public radio network. Morales co-founded Radio Bilingue in 1976. He is responsible for leading and managing all aspects of organizational development and service delivery for this non-profit organization whose mission is to serve as a voice to empower Latino and other underserved communities. Radio Bilingue is a transnational satellite community radio service in Spanish, English and Mixtec. Other responsibilities include: program development, public relations, fundraising, board development, personnel management, and key stakeholder management.

Major highlights

Hugo Noe Morales Rosas was born on March 23, 1949, in Cuyotepeji, Huajuapam de Leon, Oaxaca, in La Mixteca Baja in Southern Mexico. He is the co-founder and executive director of Radio Bilingue, Inc., the National Latino Public Radio Network, a nonprofit media producer, distributor and broadcaster. Hugo Morales serves and has served on several private foundation board of directors including, The San Francisco Foundation, The California Endowment, The Rosenberg Foundation and on several higher education panels which includes working as trustee of The California State University System. Morales has been a pioneer on Latino new media through a project he confounded, Los Angeles Public Media, that for a short time launched an innovative cross ethnic English language website that targeted educated youth Latinos, African-Americans and Asians in greater Los Angeles.
Hugo, the second child of Rafael Morales Mendoza and Concepcion Rosas Hernandez, both Mixteco indigenas, began his schooling in Tequixtepec, Huajuapam de Leon Oaxaca, the village of his father. At the age of four his mother enrolled him a in catholic elementary school, Escuela Pio XI, the town of Huajuapam de Leon. During the third grade his father managed to have the rest of the family emigrate to Healdsburg, California to join him at a farm labor camp. Morales attended West Side Elementary School where he learned English on the fly since he was the only non-English speaking student in the classroom. He was home schooled for a month at Oak Knoll Sanitarium in Santa Rosa during his 7th grade when he was recovering from tuberculosis for a year. Hugo returned to Healdsburg public schools for the 8th grade. At Healdsburg High School he co-founded the school newspaper, joined the debate team and was elected student body president. In 1972 Hugo received his A.B. degree from Harvard College. He received his J.D. degree in 1975 from the Harvard Law School. While at Harvard College as a junior he joined the volunteer staff of WHRB where he founded the Latino service for the Boston area through "La Hora", a bilingual Puerto Rican and Chicago musical, news and information program which continued until 1985. In his senior year he co-founded Harvard-Radcliffe Raza, the Latino student support group for Harvard College and Radcliffe College. Harvard-Radcliffe Raza has grown to a typical membership of 150 undergraduates. During Hugo's senior year, he led a lecture series at the Harvard Institute of Politics on Chicano politics that introduced the Harvard community to the Latino civic unrest over disparities that included civic efforts of La Raza Unida Party. He was privileged to have an office at the Harvard Institute of Politics during the 1971-72 school year. During his tenure at Harvard Law School, after his second year he continued with "La Hora" after Juan Arambula '73 had assumed its responsibility for a year. While also at Harvard Law School he was the chairman of the Boston area Latino student support group, MECHA. During his Law School years he also was a Proctor, a Harvard College resident advisor, at Greenough at Harvard College.

Career

After Harvard Law School in 1975, Hugo Morales joined the legal staff of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in Fresno, California.
In 1976, Morales joined the faculty of California State University in Fresno as an adjunct lecturer in the La Raza Studies program. In September 1976 Hugo organized Radio Bilingue in the Mexican-American barrio in Fresno, California. He teamed up with a 16-year-old engineer, Steve Weber, Jr. to build the first Radio Bilingue full power FM radio station, KSJV-FM.
On July 4, 1980, KSJV-FM went on the air with five paid staff and over forty volunteers of farmworkers, teachers, students and artists with traditional Mexican music in the likes of traditional ranchera singers Lola Beltran and Jose Alfredo Jimenez.
Radio Bilingue has been a very creative organization that has attracted very talented individuals. Some highlights of the Radio Bilingue team include the following:
-Partial List of Other Community Service-
Hugo Morales’ work has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Parade Magazine, The Fresno Bee, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Harvard Alumni Magazine, Harvard Law Bulletin, NBC's Today Show, and the PBS Latino series Heritage.

Affiliations in philanthropy