Adriana Cisneros

Early life and education

Cisneros was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to Gustavo Cisneros and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Cisneros' paternal grandfather was Diego Cisneros, who founded Grupo Cisneros. Her maternal grandfather was William H. Phelps, Jr. Her paternal great-grandfather was William H. Phelps, Sr., who, in 1953, started the first television station in Venezuela. Both were noted businessmen and ornithologists. She has an older brother, Guillermo Cisneros, and an older sister, Carolina Cisneros de Rodríguez.

In 1998, she graduated from Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, she attended along with other family members.

In 2002, Cisneros received a BA from Columbia University. In 2005 she received an MA in journalism from New York University. In 2010, Cisneros graduated from Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development.

Career

Cisneros worked at the organization, Aid for AIDS, which promotes awareness and treatment of AIDS in Latin America.

Grupo Cisneros

Grupo Cisneros is one of the largest privately held media entertainment organizations in the world.

From 2009 to August 2013, Cisneros was Vice Chairman and Director of Strategy at Grupo Cisneros. In this position, for five years Cisneros worked with her father and then CEO, Steven Bandel, to create a transition plan. In 2013, at the age of 33, Cisneros was appointed CEO of Grupo Cisneros, taking over from Bandel.

Cisneros is the third generation of her family to lead Grupo Cisneros. Her paternal grandfather, Diego Cisneros, was the organization’s founder, and she is the daughter of its former Chairman, Gustavo Cisneros and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

In the six months before Cisneros became CEO in 2013, Cisneros reorganized the company into three divisions. The three divisions are: Cisneros Media, Cisneros Interactive, Cisneros Real Estate. Cisneros Media was the legacy business, while Cisneros Interactive and Cisneros Real Estate were business units that she created from scratch.

Cisneros has said that she built upon approaches used first by her grandfather, Diego Cisneros, and later perfected by her father, Gustavo Cisneros, to establish pan-regional business relationships. An example of her father's work to distribute risk and innovate across the region was his roll-out of DirecTV Latin America in the 1990s. Corporate social responsibility is an integral part of decision-making, as Cisneros sees it as being good business to focus on responsible and strategic members within the communities they operate. One example of this is the January 1996 launch of Cl@se, the first pan-regional education channel initiative, coordinated with each country's ministry of education, that utilized DirecTV Latin American feeds and created accessible free educational programming on TVs in classrooms throughout the region.

Cisneros has been instrumental in establishing a nimble approach to business for Cisneros. She uses a small team of generalist finance and legal specialists to work on long-term goals, acquisitions, and planning.

Cisneros Interactive focuses on monetizing digital traffic with a pan-regional approach to extending their ad network. In November 2016, Cisneros Interactive started a partnership with Facebook Latin America to be its exclusive reseller in Latin American countries including Venezuela, Paraguay, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Fundación Cisneros

Cisneros has served as the President of the Fundación Cisneros, a non-profit organization founded by her parents, Gustavo Cisneros and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, that strives to improve education in Latin America and foster global awareness of the region’s heritage and its contribution to world culture. She also oversaw the foundation’s educational initiatives, including the teacher training program, Actualización de Maestros en Educación (AME).

Personal life

In 2007, Cisneros married British novelist, Nicholas Griffin. They have two children, and make their home in Miami, Florida.

Leadership

Awards