Alberto "Beto" Perez

Qualifications: Alberto Beto Perez is the creator of Zumba fitness. Alberto Beto Perez, a native of Colombia (South America)… is the founder of the company (the Latin dance workout routine) and director of the national Zumba Master trainer team. He is also a professional dancer and a celebrity choreographer.

Personal History: This dance workout is Beto’s aerobics exercise program that uses Latin inspired dance steps, such as Salsa, Merengue, Flamenco, Reggaeton, Cumbia and Samba. Recently hip hop, country music, rap, pop & other exciting songs and dance moves have been added to the dance mix.

Alberto Beto Perez created this dance workout quite by accident, as the story goes. One day as he rushed out of this house to teach his aerobics class he forgot his regular music tapes. As soon as he realized this he grabbed some Latin music tapes that were in his car and began teaching the class to this music.

By 1999 Beto had arrived in the United States, more specifically Miami Florida. In 2001, he met two young Colombian entrepreneurs Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion. The three Alberto’s partnered up and decided to produce a demo reel which eventually caught the eye of “Fitness Quest” an Ohio-based infomercial and fitness equipment company. The dance workout appealed to just about everyone regardless of age.

They began producing an infomercial as well as home videos. They were ready to start looking for their next product when their phones began ringing off the hook.

Fitness instructors across America began asking if they could get certified to teach this exciting new dance workout. Although they didn’t have a certification program in place they quickly developed a training program for instructors because there was such a huge market demand. The instructors fell in love with the dance workout and success soon followed.

By 2008, Zumba had well over 20,000 certified instructors and DVD sales in the millions.