During the celebration of the Dominican Week in the United States business event, businessman Eligio Pena (owner Associated Supermarkets chain), Mildred Otero (chief education counsel at the US Senate Committte on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions), educator and author Daisy Cocco de Filippis (president of Naugatuck Valley Community College, Connecticut), heart specialist Mario J. Garcia (chief, Division of Cardiology and Co-Director, Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care?Professor, Departments of Medicine and Radiology, Bronx, NY) and TV news producer Willie Lora (CNN in Spanish news director) received plaques from the organizers and Dominican Ambassador Anibal de Castro. The event is sponsored by the Russin Vecchi and Heredia Bonetti law firm and the American Chamber of Commerce and the Dominican Embassy in the United States and celebrates its 20th year in 2012. US Congressman Charles Rangel, representative of the district that has the largest congregation of Dominican immigrants in the US, and US Ambassador in the Dominican Republic, Raul Yzaguirre, and Julio Brache, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Dominican Republic were also present.
At the end of the event, historian Frank Moya Pons, one of the founders of Dominican Week in the US, presented a publication chronicling the 20 years of the event that was founded by lawyer Luis Heredia Bonetti to increase trade and business through increasing awareness of what is Dominican in the United States.