Luis Galeana, President of Berklee’s Latin American Music Business Association (LAMBA) continues to share his stories from the 2012 Latin Billboard Conference in Miami. Read Part 1, or check out the photo gallery.

Francisco Ruíz, Luis Galeana and Emilio Estefan

The highlight of Wednesday – the conference all the attendees were waiting for – was Emilio Estefan talking about his business relationship with retail store giant, Target. We were seated with our notebooks and ready to grasp as much information as we could from the master himself.  Leila Cobo moderated this conference. When I lifted my hand to ask Mr. Estefan a question she just winked and asked one of the assistants to give me a microphone.  I stood up ready to introduce myself, and suddenly Ms. Cobo made a hand signal cueing me to not say a word. She then said to Mr. Estefan,

“Emilio, this is Luis from Berklee College of Music, I know of your relationship with Berklee and I’m very happy to have them at the conference”.

At that moment I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Leila was introducing me to Emilio in front of everybody at the conference, and before I could say anything Emilio replied:

“Oh really? I love Berklee, in fact, Gloria and I just went there in January (Gloria Estefan led a conference in the BPC entitled ‘Inspiring The Self Teacher” on January 2012). I’m sending my daughter there for the summer (Emilio’s daughter came for the 2012 Five-Week program), so take care of her! I’m really happy to see young Berklee students here. Thank you for coming.”