Greyt Big Talk w/ Jenice Contreras
La Villa Hispana
Jenice Contreras on building La Villa Hispana, a Hispanic heritage district on Cleveland's near west side.
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Jenice Contreras | Greyt Big Talk
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Jenice Contreras
President and CEO, NEOHCED
Jenice Contreras is president and CEO of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development (NEOHCED), which works on community development and equitable asset building in Cleveland's Latino and other underserved communities. Its anchors include the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the region's only Latino Small Business Development Center. In June 2025 it opened CentroVilla25, a $12 million adaptive reuse project in Clark-Fulton billed as Cleveland's premier Latino market and food hall.
Her career spans small business development, nonprofits and healthcare. She led the Hispanic Business Center as executive director after serving on its board since 2006. Before that she was a public health consultant with Collaborative Research, supporting federal HRSA grant programs in 13 states, and director of development and HIV services at Care Alliance Health Center. She holds a BA from Capital University and an Executive MBA from Ohio State's Fisher College of Business, and she has served on the City of Cleveland's Community Relations Board.
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24 photos · In one? Open it and tag yourself.
Photos by Dan Corby
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Location
CPL South Branch
3096 Scranton Rd., Cleveland, OH
Cleveland Public Library's South Branch is a Carnegie library on Scranton Road that serves the Clark-Fulton and Tremont neighborhoods. Its stone front still reads "Public Library Carnegie South Branch" above a pointed-arch entrance, and inside, the main room rises to an octagonal skylit ceiling. After a renovation, the century-old branch reopened on December 1, 2018, during the library's 150th anniversary year.
About this event
Jenice Contreras is on a mission to build an official Hispanic American heritage district on Cleveland's near west side, between Clark-Fulton and Tremont, and to plant a flag for the neighborhood's identity with its most valuable asset: the people who call it home.






