Victor Alejandro Landa (Trainer)

I'm a native South Texan; born in San Antonio and raised on the border in both Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. My formal education, through High School, was split between two countries, two cultures and two educational systems. I am completely at home and at ease in both The United States and Mexico, as well as in both cultures and both languages.
Immediately after High School I enrolled in a merchant marine academy and spent two summers at sea where I traveled extensively and learned basic navigation, ship operations and seamanship. I later returned home to begin my studies in Latin American Literature. It was in this interim, 1981, that I began working as a news photographer for a CBS affiliate in Laredo, Texas. I have been a journalist ever since. While beginning my career as a journalist I studied and worked full-time and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree from UTSA in 1986.
My career has spanned 29 years in which I have worked as a photographer, editor, reporter, producer, assignments editor, columnist, teacher, consultant, anchor and news director. My work, which began in an English language station, crossed into Spanish television in the early 1980's when I took a job at KWEX-TV, in San Antonio. KWEX was then part of the SIN Network which later became Univision. After nine years, in 1993, I became News Director at KVDA-TV, of the Telemundo Network. In the mid 1990's the KVDA news department pioneered an internet based community correspondent project, funded in part by the Pew foundation, where citizens reported LIVE, from their homes, via the internet about issues concerning their neighborhood.
Since1992 I have been a contributing columnist for the San Antonio-Express News as well as a syndicated writer for the Hispanic Link News Service. In May of 2003 I began writing a Spanish language weekly column for Conexion, the San Antonio Express-News's bi-cultural publication. I have written more than 1200 Editorial columns which have been published across the country, including the Boston Globe, the Virginia Pilot, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the El Paso Times as well as many weekly and daily publications is throughout the country.
After ten years at KVDA I left television news to begin work as the Central Region Director for the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. My area of responsibility included the states of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado where in 2004, with a team of 750 staff and volunteers, we registered 40,000 new voters for that year's presidential election. SVREP's total registration for that year was close to 100,000 across the United States. From there, in 2005, I moved to SVREPS's sister organization, the William C. Velasquez Institute where I worked as Policy Director in charge of specific issues such as Election Reform and Agriculture Policy Reform. My job was to act as WCVI's liaison with a large number of national and international non-profit organizations that had come together to work on common issues. I have moderated congressional panels and served as a panelist for Congressional Hispanic Caucus and DNC conferences.
From October of 2007 to June of 2010 I worked as President of the Community Development Division of Phase Five Management Group. As part of my work there I designed and developed an internet based newsletter publishing platform for non-profits and community organizations called Community News Publisher.
Presently I am co-coordinator of NOWCastSA, a community journalism website funded by the Knight Fundation and the San Antonio Area Foundation. I'm also a communications consultant and mass communications and news gathering instructor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio.
I have been married for 27 years and have two children, both in college.