Héctor de Leon has spent his professional life carrying out educational initiatives with the objective of enhancing voter participation and an understanding of the electoral process via private and public organizations.
Since May 2004, Hector has worked for Harris County. He was appointed Director of Communications and Voter Outreach of the office of the Harris County Clerk in 2007. In this capacity, he helps provide the citizens of the third largest county in the nation the information needed to access the voting process, with a special focus on limited English proficient voters covered by the language provision of the 1975 Voting Rights Act and voters of African American ancestry.
Prior to joining the Harris County Clerk’s Office, Hector worked for the NALEO Educational Fund from March 1993 to April 2004. He began as the volunteer recruitment coordinator and ascended to Regional Director in 1994 after Leonel Castillo, former City of Houston Controller and Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Jimmy Carter, vacated the position. While with the NALEO Ed. Fund, Hector partnered with community-based groups creating an ad hoc network that worked to conduct citizenship classes, administer the U.S citizenship exam and provide assistance with the completion of naturalization application process to thousands of legal residents via the NALEO U.S. Citizenship Workshop model. The groups included The Metropolitan Organization (TMO), The Ft. Bend-Interfaith Council, Houston Community College Southeast, Centro Hispano Educativo, The Harris County Department of Education and several parishes within the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, as well as local elected and non-elected leaders.
In 1994, understanding that citizenship and voting go hand-in-hand, Héctor incorporated an annual voter education and voter mobilization campaign to NALEO’s programmatic activities during election cycles with the help of the local affiliates of the two major Spanish-language television networks. The campaign consisted of educational Public Service Announcements which focused on increasing awareness among Latinos about the voter registration deadline, voting by mail, early voting and election day. The PSAs were supplemented with voter registration activities and an effort to teach Latinos how to use the voting equipment. The effort concluded with an Election Day voter information hotline and election analysis for Spanish language television news.
By 2004, the NALEO Educational Fund’s national civic education activities mirrored the Houston NALEO office voter education and mobilization efforts. At the time Hector joined NALEO, the organization was known as “the nation’s foremost advocate of increased access to U.S. citizenship information and assistance.” By the time he left, his contributions had helped the NALEO Ed. Fund evolve into “the nation’s leading nonprofit organization that facilitates the full participation of Latinos in the American political process, from citizenship to public service.”
Hector began his civic engagement journey as a participant in the political action committee (PAC) Latinos Unidos from 1990 to 1994. Latinos Unidos was created by a group of Houston Latino leaders, including former Houston City Councilmember Ben T. Reyes, with the goal of increasing the participation of Latinos in the American political process. The PAC was chaired by Leonel J. Castillo.
As one of the main volunteers of Latinos Unidos, Héctor was responsible for helping organize a weekly Saturday morning meeting, finding a guest speaker and coordinating a voter registration block walk. He also organized monthly voter registration efforts at U.S. Naturalization ceremonies distributing voter registration applications to thousands of new citizens every third Friday of the month; an activity he continued until 2004 and is now the staple of the work conducted by the League of Women Voters-Houston. In addition, he helped coordinate voter mobilization activities and voter advocacy efforts.
Hector became director of the Latinos Unidos PAC laboring in the corner of Houston Councilmember Reyes’ district office in the heart of the Magnolia Park neighborhood which is near the Houston Ship Channel. Under Hector’s guidance, the group established an independent office and began offering U.S citizenship classes in an underserved Latino community in North Houston. Hector served as the Government and History instructor for legal residents seeking to naturalize.
The Latinos Unidos meetings continued throughout the 1990s, but the PAC’s regular grass-roots activities ceased after Hector went to work for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund Texas office based in Houston.
Hector’s work ethic and leadership helped established the NALEO Educational Fund as the preeminent non-profit civic education organization in Southeast Texas.
Hector was born in Monterrey and raised [in the ejido of Albercones] in the municipality of Doctor Arroyo, in the state of Nuevo Leon, where his mother was a rural teacher for over 20 years. He is a naturalized American citizen of Mexican origin whose paternal ancestors are native to the Americas.
