Eva Longoria's Targets Latinas for Support, Education In Washington, D.C., there are many ways to figure out if you are important. Being serenaded by the leader of the free world on your birthday is a good one. It was March 19, 2012, four days after her 37th, and Eva Longoria had flown into the nation's capital for a meeting at the W Hotel, right across the street from the White House. Many of the nation's top Latino advocates and activists were going to be there. So was Barack Obama. Longoria & Co. had come to speak on behalf of the community: to press the president on comprehensive immigration reform; to push for passage of the DREAM Act; to explain, as Longoria tells Newsweek, that Latinos "didn't just want to be courted at election time. They wanted real results. Obama, meanwhile, had come to listen. But before the group could get down to business, the president had a message of his own for Longoria. After Obama was elected in 2008, the White House had asked the actress to help study a proposed ­Latino-­American museum in the capital. By 2011, she was hosting fundraisers in ­Miami, Los Angeles, and New York for the reelection campaign, and the following year saw her barnstorming in swing states and speaking at the Democratic National Convention. "The president and Eva have a relationship of longstanding mutual respect and admiration," says Henry Muñoz, a San Antonio businessman who in 2012 headed up Obama's Latino fundraising group, the Futuro Fund, and now serves as the DNC's finance chairman. He knows that she is a serious person. And so, as Obama entered the sleek dark-wood-paneled conference room, he wheeled a big birthday cake in front of him - and began to sing "Happy Birthday." The rest of the attendees immediately joined in. Longoria enjoyed the warm and fuzzy reception. But she wasn't about to go soft - to waste "this unusual, privileged opportunity to have a dialogue with the president," as she puts it. So when, later in that meeting, Obama began to equivocate on immigration, blaming Congress for failing to pass the DREAM Act, she pushed back. "But Mr. President, you have to do something," she said. Spurred by Longoria's challenge, the conversation turned to the possibility that Obama would move unilaterally to reduce the threat of deportation for young immigrants who were brought to America illegally as children - a step the Latino community very much ­wanted him to take. The nation had been torn over the issue for years. After President George W. Bush's comprehensive reform effort collapsed in 2007, the right retreated into send-them-home-and-secure-the-borders fundamentalism, while the left became largely passive on the issue, with Obama himself famously promising (and then failing) to "strongly" support an immigration bill in the "first year" of his presidency. Now Longoria had a warning for the commander in chief: if and when you finally decide to protect the DREAMers, she said, make sure to speak from the heart. "At a critical point in the meeting, Eva turned to the president and said, "Mr. President, the way in which you make this announcement will be just as important as the announcement itself,"" Muñoz recalls. "It was her training talking: "Your message has to be emotional, intergenerational, and show how this has a real substantive impact on families."" Three months later, Obama strode into the Rose Garden and announced that his administration would be granting relief to as many as 1.7 million immigrants who'd otherwise be subject to deportation - "these young people who study in our schools ... play in our neighborhoods, [are] friends with our kids, [and] pledge allegiance to our flag." "Clearly, what Eva said struck a chord with him," says Muñoz. I think she had a real impact. No one who first encountered Eva Longoria as Miss Corpus Christi in 1998, or as Isabella Braña on The Young and the Restless from 2001 to 2003, or even as Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives from 2004 to 2012, would likely have predicted that the petite actress would become a political and philanthropic powerhouse. And yet now, a year after the final episode of Housewives aired on ABC, that's exactly what Longoria is becoming. In early 2012 she launched the Eva Longoria Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to studying and investing in educational and entrepreneurial opportunities for American Latinas. Coupled with her connections in Washington, D.C., and Hollywood and her ongoing work as an activist and advocate - for Obama, for Hispanic farmworkers, for those with special needs - the move has the potential to make Longoria one of the most influential Latinos in the country: a Bono, of sorts, for the Hispanic community. "I'm not a red-carpet, showing-up-for-the-cause kind of girl," she insists. I want to know the issues. I want to be literate on the topic. I want to be well versed in what I'm saying. I'm not a talking head. I'd like to think I'm more substantial than that. Longoria's path to politics and philanthropy started early. During her childhood in Corpus Christi, she would visit a local soup kitchen with her aunt and spend Thanksgivings at the local homeless shelter with her parents and siblings. Rarely did the seasons change without Longoria's mother exhorting her to clean out her ­closet for the Salvation Army. "I knew these words early on in my life," Longoria says. "I knew "volunteer," "soup kitchen," "Salvation Army," "Goodwill," "Boys and Girls Club." I didn't think much about them until I got ­older, but I volunteered all throughout my childhood. All the way up through college. It was Longoria's sister Liza, however, who truly inspired her to serve others. "My oldest sister has special needs, and I was born into her world of Special Olympics and MHMR [services for the mentally ill and mentally retarded]," she says. So I always saw these organizations benefiting us at every level. By the time Longoria arrived in Hollywood, the die was cast. "I had a friend before I was famous who told me, "You're going to have a voice one day, so be sure you have something to say,"" she explains. He was involved in farmworkers, and the UFW, and Dolores Huerta, and Cesar Chavez. So he really taught me about ­Mexican-­American activism. In 2001 Longoria joined the ­Mexican-­American Legal Defense Education Fund (MALDEF); shortly after, she signed on as the na­tional spokesperson for Padres Contra El Cáncer, a position she still holds. "I just went to the hospital one day," she says, "and I never ­really left." Finally, in 2006, Longoria founded an organization of her own: Eva's Heroes, which is dedicated to helping young adults with special needs succeed in school and in society. Still, it wasn't until Desperate Housewives began to wind down that Longoria's activism really ramped up. "After Desperate Housewives, I started getting invitations for everything," Longoria says. AIDS in Africa, dolphins in Japan, trafficking in Thailand, orphanages in Mexico, the Haiti relief, the Katrina relief - you get pulled in so many different directions. But I thought, how can I be most effective and strategic with my voice? While enrolled in a master's program in Chicano studies and political science at Cal State, Northridge, she noticed that research and resources often focused on Latinos or women generally, but not on Latinas specifically. And two trends - one positive, one negative - really cried out for attention. The positive was Latina entrepreneurship. "Latina-owned businesses grow at eight times the rate of any other small business," Longoria explains. Latinas also start businesses at eight times the national average. For me that's a ray of hope. They're tena­ci­ous, they're ambitious, and they're ­driven. They just need the tools and the capital to make it happen. That's the kind of success we want to foster with the foundation. The negative, however, was education. "Latinas are one of strongest groups in terms of desire for education and importance of education, yet their high school and college graduation rates are among the lowest," says Maggie Neilson of Global Philanthropy Group, the advisory firm that oversees the Eva Longoria Foundation and has assisted many other celebrities (Bono, Richard Branson, Madonna) with their causes. That really piqued Eva's interest. Several rounds of research later, Longoria's budding foundation settled on a mission of providing funding to programs and research in these areas. Longoria's voice crackles with emotion and enthusiasm when asked about the first educational initiative she has decided to support: the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE), an organization that teaches parents how to foster a positive educational environment for their children. "Once parents go through this nine-week program, 90 percent of their kids graduate from high school [up nearly 30 percent from the L.A. average]," she says. So as long as we can get these parents into the program and pay their way, we can guarantee a 90 percent graduation rate. Longoria was further encouraged by a recent graduation ceremony in Los Angeles. "I spoke to a mother there," Longoria says. "She was holding her little certificate, and she said, "I never went past third grade. This is the first certificate of any kind that I've ever received. And her daughter was so proud of her. Meanwhile, in April Longoria will announce the foundation's first entrepreneurial initiative: a partnership with Howard Buffett, Warren's son, to distribute $2 million in micro­loans to upstart Latina business owners in Texas and Los Angeles. "Most Latinas want to open a nail shop or a bodega - something small - and they only need $10,000," Neilson says. There's a massive pipeline and a dearth of funding. Longoria secured Buffett's donation after cooking him eggs and riding on a combine at his farm in Illinois, and the two of them, bound by their shared interest in farmworkers, quickly became friends; in recent months, they have visited the ­Arizona-­Mexico border, traveled to Central America, and planted corn together in Decatur. "Howard is a Mexican trapped in a white man's body," Longoria says, laughing. He's a generous, generous human being. This sort of relationship building - Buffett is a Republican, and Longoria is decidedly not - reflects the broader talents Longoria brings to politics and philanthropy. "She is absolutely the decision maker," says Neilson about how the foundation functions. She's also incredibly intellectually driven on this topic, so she provides new opportunities to drive our learning. Finally, she can get anyone on the phone. If you don't have an Eva as your draw, you're just a foundation. What we can accomplish in three months with her would take a year without her. Muñoz agrees. "I think Eva is very surprising and disarming to people," he says. They may have an image of her that's not the reality at all. She's getting a master's degree, she studies, and she's incredibly informed on a wide range of issues. People are surprised by her interest in and mastery of the issues. Her philanthropy and public service are just as important to her as acting. She is very willing to let her light shine on others. Longoria insists that she will "continue to try to balance" her acting and her activism, and she demurs when asked if she intends to run for office someday. "I could never imagine it ... right now," she says. Still, it isn't hard to imagine Longoria eventually crossing over into politics. After all, who knows what she wished for when she blew out her birthday candles?