One of the most important campaigns tackled by Medicis Communications focused on early immunizations of Hispanic children born in California, says director Luis Valdivia. “We learned,” he says, “that over 50 percent of births in California were Latino, but they had the lowest immunization record in the state.”

That campaign was the start of what has become a specialty of this bilingual integrated marketing firm — health education, much of it for Latina women and their children.

Valdivia joined the firm’s Tijuana office in 1989, three years after it opened, as a graphic designer. The Bonita office had opened in 1988, and he worked between the two. He progressed to an account executive and then to account supervisor before being named director. He now has the longest employee tenure in the company and is the right hand to Medicis Communications owner Patricia Cicconi.

“We saw the need,” Valdivia says of getting health information to Hispanics. “We do a lot of pro bono work.” Those campaigns have included HIV/AIDS awareness in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Valdivia, 38, heads the Bonita office’s eight employees and has at his disposal the full staff of professionals in the Tijuana office.

Most of his organizational memberships are related to his work: Latin Business Owners of America; Otay Mesa, San Diego County Hispanic and San Diego Regional chambers; San Diego Advertising Club, and several others.

“My time is divided between my job and my family,” says Valdivia, who claims no time-consuming hobbies. He lives in Tijuana with his wife of 15 years, Diana, his son, Christian, 12, and daughter Monique, 4. Citing his large family and his wife’s, he says leisure time is spent in extended family activity.

— Sandy Pasqua