Cristina Saralegui

Born January 29, 1948 in Havana, Cuba, young Cristina was brought up in the strict image of her grandfather, magazine publisher Don Francisco Saralegui, known throughout Latin America as "The Paper Czar". He introduced her to journalism. In 1960, at the age of 11, she left Castro's Cuba to start anew in Miami's Cuban exile community. She attended the University of Miami, majoring in mass communications and creative writing, while beginning an internship with Vanidades, the #1 women's magazine in Latin America. As she had received all of her formal training in English, she then had to teach herself how to write in Spanish, which, according to her, "proved to be a great challenge". In 1979, while still working for three of the most successful magazines published in Latin America, Cristina was named Editor-in-Chief of the internationally distributed Cosmopolitan en Español, the Spanish-language version of the Hearst magazine Cosmopolitan, which was circulated in all Latin American countr