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    Listed as one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals" in 2005, the Reverend Luis Cortés Jr. is the president and CEO of Philadelphia-based Esperanza (Hope), the largest Hispanic faith-based community-development corporation in the country.  The Reverend was also featured in the PBS documentary by award-winning director, Philip Rodriguez, Latinos ’08 that explored the 2008 presidential election through the prism of ethnic politics.

“Esperanza USA promotes education, faith, jobs, and home ownership as the four cornerstones of a successful life.” - Reverend Luis Cortés Jr. 
    The nonprofit builds assets for Latinos in critical areas through the church and the community development corporation founded in 1987. Esperanza provides a charter school academy and junior college, incubation for small businesses, and on-ramps for first-time home owners, cutting edge initiatives of the national Latino movement. Cortes preaches a message of holistic renewal, addressing both spiritual and material needs, with a strong emphasis on self-help for Latinos.
    Slightly more than half the Latinos graduate from high school in the U.S., leaving the others at a permanent disadvantage in the hourglass economy. Esperanza founded a charter high school that now enrolls 600 students, utilizing English, Spanish and technology to equip kids to succeed. The Nueva Esperanza Center for Higher Education is a junior college, providing post-secondary education for two years after high school during which students can hone their English skills, while receiving credits that can be applied toward a bachelor's degree when they transfer to a college or university. By the second year, all classes in the junior college are taught in English.  In 2006 only 2 of 630 Esperanza Academy Charter High School students dropped out in a Philadelphia School District has a 43% Latino dropout rate and where half of Esperanza’s neighborhood population over age 25 does not have a high school diploma. Esperanza was one of only three neighborhood (non magnet) high schools in the city to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (No Child Left Behind standard) for two consecutive years and the school has a zero tolerance policy for fighting, vandalism, drug, alcohol and weapons possession. 
    Home ownership is a major factor in building assets. Latino and African-American family net wealth is on average $4,000, compared to $44,000 for their Anglo counterparts. Because 60 percent of that is in homes, one way to begin to build assets and the ability to pass them on to children is home ownership. Nueva Esperanza builds new homes, repairs dilapidated ones, and coaches new owners through the application process with bilingual mortgage counseling and homebuyer workshops, helping 50-75 families each year purchase their first home.
Creating a critical mass of resources in a neighborhood is one of the keys to community renewal. So Nueva Esperanza acquired a six-acre campus that serves as a nerve center for its growing operations, including the academy and junior college, a gymnasium, 12 businesses, and state offices for employment. The group manages 320,000 sq. ft. of commercial real estate. Esperanza also acquired a 150-acre campground to offer not only swimming, sports, and crafts, but also character education, abstinence training, and academic enrichment.
Through the Faith-Based Initiative, Esperanza has re-granted funds to other Latino ministries to help them create jobs and housing in other cities. 
    Rev. Cortes is a founder of the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, an annual event since 2002 convening the spiritual leadership of the fastest growing segment of the American population, the President, and a bipartisan slate of congressional representatives that meet with Hispanic clergy and community leaders during Capitol Hill visits to discuss important issues affecting the Latino community.
    Undoubtedly, mobilizing the strengths of the faithful to help with the transition educationally and economically is a significant opportunity. "We need to build institutions in this country as citizens," says Cortes. "We need to become part of mainstream society, but do it in accordance with our faith." National expansion of the Esperanza efforts and approach include building houses in poor communities, offering start-up loans to Hispanic businesses, and launching an aids-awareness program, thus fusing faith with economic development and building civic participation to make Latinos assets for the U.S.  

    The efforts of Cortes to give Latinos hoper, homes, jobs, and education was noted in Barbara J.Elliott’s 2004 book, “Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities.”