Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez and her husband John Rodriguez are longtime activists in the Puerto Rican community of Rochester, New York. They have a daughter, Melony. Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez is the founder of Borinquen Dance Company, the first Hispanic professional performing arts group in upstate New York. John Rodriguez has engaged in a variety of political and cultural activities including the election campaigns of Nancy Padilla. Padilla-Rodriguez is a longtime school administrator, activist, and dance troupe leader in Rochester, New York. Raised in the Rochester area, Padilla-Rodriguez attended SUNY Brockport, where she graduated in 1976 with a degree in elementary education and dance. She went on to earn an M.S. in education from SUNY Brockport in 1985 after completing a thesis on Puerto Ricans in Greater Rochester.

As a young woman, Nydia pursued dancing; in the late 1970s, she was a member of Garth Fagan’s Bottom of the Bucket, Dance Theater (now Bucket Dance Theater). In 1981, she founded the Borinquen Dance Theatre under the aegis of the Puerto Rican Arts and Cultural Center in Rochester. As the troupe grew, they moved to the Hochstein School of Music, where for nearly two decades Borinquen was the Ensemble in Residence. Padilla-Rodriguez has taught Caribbean dance at Hochstein since 1984.

Padilla-Rodriguez has also worked for a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations including the United Way of Greater Rochester, Monroe County as an Equal Opportunity Employment Officer, and the Rochester City School District as assistant principal and administrator in the district’s offices.

John Rodriguez studied photographic illustration at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the early 1980s, he worked as a freelance photographer for Spanish-language newspapers and nonprofit organizations in addition to regular work in television and video production for local television newscasts. He went on to hold management positions in marketing and advertising before becoming a consultant and cofounder of the Latino Advocacy Coalition, a group dedicated to community-building among Latinos in sectors such as faith, education, government, and business.