15 Latinas We Love!

NAME: Shakira

AGE: 34

ROOTS: Colombian-Lebanese

Beauty Transformation: Shakira

Watch: Shakira Advocates for Immigrants in Arizona

WHY WE LOVE HER:

She’s a modern-day conquistadora, having helmed the ultimate Latin crossover in the millennium to become a global superstar capable of transcending language barriers.

Shaki is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and fight for universal access to education via her own foundation, Pies Descalzos, which currently serves some 5,000 children—as well as their parents— in rural Colombia. Even do-gooder Bono once said of her, “when she gets going on the subject of child poverty, she can be pretty scary.”

Each time she sways her hips to the beat of her Arab ancestors, she moves muscles we didn’t even know existed!

Even after conquering the finicky Anglo market—and selling over 60 million albums as well as signing a 10-year touring and merchandising deal with Live Nation worth an estimated $70 to $100 million—she’s still singing in her mother tongue, and that’s music to our ears.

This “she-wolf” is at her fiercest when talking policy with world leaders—such as President Obama and World Bank President Robert Zoellick—who not only listen, but are propelled to follow her lead. In 2010, Shaki got the World Bank to commit to a groundbreaking $300 million initiative aimed at expanding development programs for children in Latin America and the Caribbean—a region where some 46 million children under age 6 go without basic health care and education.

ON HER NEED TO GIVE: “I grew up in the developing world, I grew up seeing injustice. . . I’ve also seen that, in countries like mine, when a child is born poor, he will die poor, unless he receives an opportunity. That opportunity is education. It’s that helping hand that they’re looking for. Latin America is a young continent, it’s malleable; it’s flexible. We still can change.”