Beto Pérez

Alberto "Beto" Pérez (born 15 March 1970) is a Colombian dancer, choreographer, businessman, and Zumba instructor. He created the exercise fitness program Zumba in the late 1990s which involves dance and aerobic exercise elements with accompanying music, specifically Latin, and associated martial arts moves, squats, lunges, and other aerobic techniques.

Beginnings

Pérez was raised in Cali, Colombia, by a single mother and was working three jobs by age 14 to support his family. His passion was dancing, but he could not afford dance lessons. After he won a national lambada contest in Colombia, he was accepted to one of Cali's best academies to study dance while he taught step aerobics in return.

Business

In 1999, Pérez moved to Miami, Florida "in search of the American Dream". Besides teaching aerobics classes, he tried to promote his fitness and dance routines with music at numerous venues. In 2001, Beto asked Williams Island fitness director (Brenda Anderson) to take a chance on promoting his dance routines in a class at the center. In 2003 after his first infomercial and with financial and technical assistance from Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion, workshops resulted that were based on Zumba routines. His routines, initially distributed as DVDs, gained momentum that resulted in an international following.

In 2006 Pérez established Zumba Fitness LLC, an organization that sells Zumba videos and products and charges licensing fees to its network of instructors (ZIN™ – Zumba Instructors' Network). It employs more than 200 employees. Reportedly some 14 million people in more than 160,000 locations in 185 countries are Zumba practitioners and dance and sing to fun music mainly provided by the company.