About Us - Grassroots Media
Grassroots Media
With access to over 600 digital, print, TV, and radio Ethnic and Community Media outlets nationwide, spanning 40+ languages and 25+ communities—including African, Latino, Asian, Russian, Jewish, Caribbean, South Asian—we deliver ad campaigns that resonate.
More than a traditional agency, Grassroots Media combines cultural insight and strategic excellence to make your message inspire and engage across multiethnic communities nationwide.
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Founder & CEO
José Bayona
José Bayona is the Founder and CEO of Grassroots Media and Grassroots Strategies, a bilingual consulting professional with extensive experience in multicultural communications, government operations, community affairs, ethnic and community media advertising, and the digital, print, and broadcast media industries.
From January 2022 to May 2024, Bayona served as the founding Executive Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media, the first-ever mayoral office of its kind in the United States. He advised the Mayor and city agencies to ensure the government reached multicultural audiences effectively in New York City. Before this, he served as spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio and held the title of Director of Community and Ethnic Media and Deputy Press Secretary at the Mayor’s Office, where he managed communications for 20 city agencies and oversaw Executive Order 47 requiring city agencies to spend at least half of their annual print and digital advertising budgets on ethnic and community media outlets.
At City Hall, Bayona also managed the implementation of Local Law 83 of 2021, which set a goal for city and mayoral agencies to spend at least half their total annual advertising budget on ethnic and community media outlets. He also managed NYC’s Ethnic and Community Media Marketing Directory for advertising purposes, which included more than 350 media outlets citywide.
Bayona spent most of his journalism career at the New York Daily News, where he started as a community reporter. Afterward, he was a writer for NY1 Noticias and Metro Editor for El Diario NY before entering city government as deputy press secretary for the NYC Department of Transportation and press secretary for the NYC Administration for Children’s Services. He has also worked with non-profit organizations in communications and as an adjunct professor at Hofstra University and CUNY’s Baruch College.
City and State Magazine’s 2023 Power of Diversity: Latino Power 100 list of accomplished leaders recognized Bayona for his work; as well as Politics NY and amNY Metro in its inaugural 2024 Latino Power Players list. City & State New York also recognized Bayona in its inaugural Who is Who in Communications list in November 2024 as one of the pros to know in New York politics and government.
City & State New York selected Bayona as a member of its Board of Advisors in October 2025. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College Office of Diplomatic Engagement and Training.
Bayona holds an M.A. in Journalism from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism – Urban and Interactive reporting concentrations – and graduated Cum Laude from the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies in Journalism and Political Science from Baruch College.