Pablo Kleinman

Pablo Kleinman
Born	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Southern California (BA) HEC Paris (MBA) London Business School
Occupation	Entrepreneur, Journalist
Religion	Jewish[1]

Pablo Kleinman is an Argentine-born American entrepreneur and journalist, pioneer of the development of online services in Latin America.^[2][3] He graduated from the University of Southern California School of International Relations (USC, Los Angeles) and went on to study at the London Business School and at the HEC School of Management in Paris, where he obtained an MBA.

Early life

Kleinman was born in Buenos Aires into a family of Polish-Jewish origin.^[1] When he was 13 years old, Kleinman immigrated to the United States and settled in the city of Los Angeles with his parents and siblings. His great-grandmother, however, had arrived in the United States via Ellis Island in the 1930s and his extended family has kept a permanent presence in Southern California since the 1940s.

Technology Pioneer

In 1986, at age 15, Pablo set up an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) in Buenos Aires called "TCC: The Computer Connection" which was one of the first in the region and the first to run under a Microsoft-designed platform. A year later, TCC became FidoCenter, the first node of the worldwide FidoNet network in Latin America. Pablo Kleinman was the Coordinator of FidoNet for the whole of Latin America (FidoNet's Zone 4) between 1987 and 1991. During that period, FidoNet became the largest public-access computer network in the region. It grew throughout the different countries in the region and reached several hundreds of access points in dozens of Latin American cities. He was also the author of WorldPol, a policy proposal that was published originally in 1991 and constituted the first democratic organization proposal in cyberspace.^[4]

Many of the original participants of FidoNet in Latin America became the pioneers of the Internet in the following years. Pablo Kleinman was an active participant of the first Spanish-language newsgroups and was one of the founders of several of the Usenet groups dedicated to Latin American countries. Shortly after and during the following ten years, he participated in the founding of several online services companies. Currently, he's CEO of Urbita, a travel and local-information online platform with several million active users.^[5][6]

Journalism and Media

Kleinman began working as a journalist in 1989 as Latin American correspondent for Billboard Magazine, the first one to cover the region for the prestigious trade publication.^[7]

In 2004, he founded and became Editor-in-Chief of Diario de América, the oldest political-opinion journal edited in Spanish in the United States. Around the same time, he became a syndicated writer, with columns regularly published in newspapers throughout Latin America and Spain, such as Chile’s El Mercurio and La Nación, Panama’s Panamá América^[8] and La Prensa, Nicaragua’s La Prensa,^[9] Peru’s El Comercio, Paraguay’s Diario ABC Color, Venezuela’s Diario 2001, Uruguay’s El País,^[10] Costa Rica’s La Nación, among others, as well as in the United States^[11][12] and the Middle East.^[13] During the 2008 presidential elections in the United States he co-authored the popular blog Democracia en América on Libertad Digital, one of the most important news and opinion websites in Spain.

In April 2013, Pablo Kleinman became Publisher of El Medio, the first Spanish-language political opinion journal about the Middle East.^[14] The magazine quickly became known for espousing a pro-Western editorial line, something uncommon among most Spanish-language publications. It features points of view generally favorable to the United States, to Israel, and to supporters of liberal democracy throughout the Middle East. Just a few weeks after its launch, selected columns from El Medio began to be featured regularly on some of the largest mainstream newspapers in Latin America, effectively turning the magazine into a news syndication service as well.

Kleinman is also a frequent commentator on a few Spanish-language current affairs television programs, including the nighttime news on the Telemundo Network's Los Angeles station. He has also been featured on English-language television newscasts in the U.S. and Canada, usually talking about Latin American issues.^[15] Pablo regularly guest hosted the daily current affairs show on Univision's nationwide talk radio network, Univision America, between 2009 and 2014.

Political career

In early 2009, he took to organizing the Fundación Californiana or Californiana Foundation, a Section 501(c)(3) educational charity dedicated to reaffirming the notion of Hispanics as part of the mainstream of American society, primarily through its Romualdo Pacheco Initiative, and to educating the public on the principles of individual self-reliance and market economics in both English and Spanish.

In February 2014, Kleinman announced that he was running for United States Congress in California's 30th congressional district, against long-time incumbent Democrat Brad Sherman.^[16] Despite the poor brand image of the Republican Party in Los Angeles and the local trend of moderate Republicans running as Independents,^[17] Kleinman ran in the Primary as a GOP candidate and as a self-described New Generation Republican.^[18]

Pablo Kleinman’s campaign as the first Hispanic Jewish candidate in a heavily Jewish and Hispanic district generated a lot of favorable buzz in the media and was seen as a potential game-changer in an area where Democrats have won every election for many years.^[19][20][21] As a political outsider, he encountered difficulty getting endorsements from members of the Republican establishment, although he did secure prominent endorsements from Conservative Talk Radio hosts^[22] as well as from well-known local community figures.

Kleinman’s positioning as a moderate conservative was widely regarded as logical and smart in a district where Democrats hold a substantial registration lead but appear divided^[23] and where no Republican has won in over a generation.^[24] However, it was furiously resisted by the more reactionary sectors of the local Republican party,^[25] particularly by some local Tea Party groups and by the Liberty Caucus-controlled Republican Assembly District Central Committees in the San Fernando Valley, which actively campaigned against him.^[26] Kleinman lost the June 3rd, 2014 primary, unable to overcome opposition from hardline conservative groups and, more importantly, voter apathy: voter turnout for the primary registered a new historic low for the district.^[27]

He currently serves as Delegate and member of the Executive Committee of the California Republican Party. On June 7, 2016, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Los Angeles County Republican Party for a two-year term.^[28]

References

External links

• Diario de América - America's Daily (in Spanish)
• Urbita: I love this place!
• Revista El Medio
• Article from the newspaper O Globo (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) about the foundational meeting of FidoNet in that country (May 20th, 1991, in Portuguese)