Can you share a little bit about your own family's immigration story from Bolivia to the United States? How did that experience influence the direction of your own career working in the private sector and then in the nonprofit world?
My family arrived in the Washington, DC area from Bolivia a few months before I was born. The second youngest of nine siblings, I was raised in a completely Latino household. We spoke Spanish in our house, all our culture and our customs were from our country, our dinner conversations were all about Bolivia. Growing up here in the 1960s amidst the civil rights movement, our discussions around politics both in Bolivia and in this country, were a central part of my childhood. Over the years, I watched my parents instill in our family unit a strong element of social justice. I went to college at the University of Maryland, worked for General Electric, and then attended grad school at Duke and from there settled into a corporate career. While my work was always in finance, I hoped that one day I would be able to use those skills in a way that would make a difference.
I was raised speaking both languages, and watched as my siblings worked hard to assimilate - which can mean that you lose what is important to you from your own culture. Today my siblings are multilingual and multicultural, but they struggled when they first arrived. A large part of the work that we do at Neighbors Link is about integration and inclusion. The families we serve learn to have significant pride for their own culture and are empowered to share that with their children.
Your first role at Neighbors Link was as a volunteer in 2003, what initially drew you to the organization and what made you decide to eventually leave your career in finance to become Executive Director?
After a couple of decades in the private sector, I was living in Mount Kisco and came into Neighbors Link to stuff envelopes as a volunteer, that was my first exposure to the work of the organization. I remember walking through the doors and seeing groups of families and individuals working hard to raise their families in this country and I thought this was the work I wanted to do. I was on the Board of Directors when the organization was trying to find an Executive Director, I didn’t think that I had the skills or qualifications and was still working in the private sector but was lucky to be considered for the position. I thought I needed nonprofit experience but quickly realized that many of my skills were transferable. Added to that was my personal immigrant experience and I decided to give it a shot. While it was a tough decision, it was what I had hoped I could always do with my life.
How did your experience in the private sector help prepare you to take on the role of Executive Director, was it a difficult decision to leave the private sector? Were there any specific lessons that you took with you and what if any lessons would you take back to the private sector having run a nonprofit for almost two decades?
I did have to think through that decision very carefully as I knew it would affect my whole family. Twenty years ago, we were a small community-based organization, very grassroots in our work. I think we were three employees and now we’re over sixty with an immigration legal practice and some significant, excellent, high-quality programming that empowers families on their pathway to economic mobility and social inclusion. The idea of working in my own community also resonated with me, working with the immigrant community is a gift and honor. I feel fortunate that I did make that shift, it’s added a tremendous amount of meaning to life.
I’m proud of Neighbors Link’s work as it relates to programs and being able to evolve the organization’s legal practice and advocacy work. Providing our elected officials both at the county and state level with information about the real value that immigrants bring to our economy and our culture is also part of our work. Each one of those steps has added a fascinating dimension to the work and I have loved that growth overtime.
You’ve grown Neighbors Link from a budget of approximately $350,000 to $9 million in under twenty years without having had any formal fundraising experience before you took on the role of Executive Director. Is that something that came naturally to you or were there certain skils that you think translated directly from your previous career?
I think we were successful in conveying to donors and to the community that this organization was worth the investment and we looked at fundraising as making an investment in social capital. To do that, you need to have your policies in place, strong controls, solid financial systems, and a strategic business plan. We set out to do that from the very beginning.
We also focused on communicating the fact that we had high quality programs while relying heavily on data. We have an excellent system of tracking all program participation, and beyond that, tracking outcomes. We approach our work by asking how much did we do, how well did we do it, and is anybody better off? By looking at those three factors and conveying that to our “investors” we brought the funding in. We also gave our donors confidence in us as an organization and proved this was a way of strengthening the whole community.
There’s no question that there's both a private sector and social justice thread running through everything we do. We need to run high quality and excellent programs because everyone deserves to live with dignity and respect regardless of where they were born or what their economic situation might be. At the end of the day, I believe in what we are doing deeply and completely.
You’ve mentioned that partnerships are a key component to running successful organizations. What are some of the key partnerships you have helped forge through Neighbors Link?
The role of partners in our work is a key element of the concept of working with and integrating the whole community. It is a critical part of our strategy and successfully meeting our mission, and we’ve done it in a very intentional and clear way. I’ve been so fortunate to have had opportunities to serve as the Chair of the Board of the
New York Immigration Coalition and serve on the boards at
Northern Westchester Hospital and
Nonprofit Westchester. Our partnerships with various organizations must exist not just at the leadership level, but also among our highly expert staff members that are doing phenomenal work on the ground and know what's needed in the community.
We’ve worked closely with police departments to think about community policing in a way that ensures that victims and witnesses of crime are comfortable stepping forward regardless of their legal status. Even if a person has status in this country, they may have a family member without status making that individual afraid to speak up or participate in our system. Police officers participate in our programs alongside our clients sharing their stories and working to build trust.
Other examples of how our partnerships make a significant difference was when the pandemic hit, one of the first phone calls I got was from the CEO of Northern Westchester Hospital and together we created a plan and were able to ensure that 93% of the immigrant community in this area were vaccinated early on, when there was fear and resistance to the vaccine. We’ve also partnered with the highly skilled teachers at the English Language Institute of
Westchester Community College, it is an example of how we bring in the expertise of our partners to offer excellent programs. I can't say enough about how important these partnerships have been to strengthening the whole community.
What have been some of your proudest moments during your tenure at Neighbors Link?
On a personal level, I am most proud that I transitioned out of the private sector and joined this social justice work. At the time it wasn’t an easy decision because it meant some significant changes for our life, but it immediately felt right for me. I am also proud that employees, volunteers, clients, and all community members that work with us are encouraging their networks to be involved in issues related to immigrant justice.
An important aspect of our mission is to help the whole community integrate. We are proud of the fact that we work with the immigrant community, and we also work with those that we would call longer term residents to help them understand the immigrant experience and why immigrants are compelled to leave their country. Longer term residents are often families whose prior generations came to this country. The reality is, almost everyone in this country has an immigration story. The concept of working with the whole community is a very special element of Neighbors Link. We provide cultural awareness training so that the whole community understands the value and importance of having this diversity as part of our community. There is also a section on our website called Myths and Realities that helps people understand the economic value of immigration and the extent to which this country relies on immigrants to grow our economy.
From a business perspective, I'm proud that this is an organization that really values its employees and that this is a place where they want to work. I hope that the employees of Neighbors Link feel respected and appreciated.
Are there lessons that you've learned now, being in the nonprofit sector for 20 years that you would take back to the private sector or that you would pass on to other leaders?
I think the most incredible thing about this work from the perspective of running an organization is the passion, the joy and the heart our staff put into their work. Our team knows the difference they're making. If you could find a way to bring that kind of passion to people's work in the private sector, I think you would see the financial benefit. It comes through in the quality of work in so many different ways.
When the pandemic hit, everyone at Neighbors Link was aware that productivity shot up even though people were working from home, experiencing personal crises, and caring for ill family members. We certainly had the idea in the private sector that you needed to physically be present to do your job. Our productivity and significant outcomes during the pandemic completely changed our view of what staff need in order to be productive, to love their job, to make a big difference, and to improve both quality and outcomes.
A new Gallup poll shows Americans consider immigration the country’s single most important problem for the first time since 2019. It has also become a highly politicized issue as we head into the 2024 presidential election. You recently took a trip to the Southern border; can you share a little bit about what you witnessed and learned during that trip?
A few of the takeaways from having visited the border is that we very clearly need additional pathways for people coming into this country. When people are given a pathway to come in legally, they will use it, even if it means that they must wait. For example, I witnessed people waiting in the shelters in Mexico to receive an appointment through the CBP One App to come into the country, many had been waiting for some months to make an appointment. 100% of the people were waiting their turn and it was an orderly process, even in their desperation to flee for their lives, they waited because they had a path. If people are given a way in which to come into this country through legal means, they will follow the rules and they will follow the path.
I think, where the panic and difficulties set in is when there's no way of escaping and then families are forced to do whatever they have to come into the country out of desperation and fear for their lives.
I would also like to see the media focus more on the very clear data that is now coming out that shows the immediate contributions that immigrants make to our economy. In addition to the fact that this is the right thing to do from a humanitarian perspective, immigration clearly is an economic benefit to our country.
The situation on the southern border seems to have hit a crisis point, the issue itself almost feels intractable. As someone who has been working on issues related to immigration and directly serving immigrant communities for almost two decades, how do you see us finding ourselves out of this crisis?
We need to understand there's no political will in congress to implement better policies. I’ll even say it’s to the benefit of both political parties not to resolve this issue. There are many possible ways in which our government could alleviate what's happening at the border. It includes handling the asylum backlog, having more immigration judges and more attorneys available, finding ways to expedite work permits, there's a variety of different strategies we should be implementing.
We also have to commit reasonable resources to help people when they first arrive into this country and recognize the long term payoff and benefit of that investment. Immigrants are part of a workforce that has had and will have a significant impact on our economy. It’s short sighted to only focus on the resources needed over the short term to help people. Most people needing help in their first year or so will stabilize their lives and become contributing members of our community. Their skills are clearly in demand as we experience a significant labor shortage in this country.
The generation that migrates makes a difficult sacrifice, leaving behind family and all they hold dear, but they are doing it to survive and for their children. It’s important to understand that.
How do you view the future of Neighbors Link given the current crisis and our political situation?
I've been doing this work for twenty years and no matter what restrictions we place at the border, whether they be physical or whether they be policy related, our thirst for this work force and the desperate situations in other countries will compel people to migrate. The volume ebbs and flows and we might have a period of time where we have less people, and then periods where more people will be coming into our country. Neighbors Link will continue to provide high quality and critically needed services to empower families to stabilize their lives and strengthen the whole community.
Any final thoughts or things you want to leave readers with?
It is important to know the extent to which individual community members can have an impact, helping their networks understand the role immigrants have played in building our cities and our economy in this county. Most of us are from a prior wave of immigrants. Going back to our mission statement that talks about strengthening the whole community, we must acknowledge the important role each person can play in changing the narrative and the conversation, making sure we dispel the rhetoric. We have over 750 volunteers at Neighbors Link because we want there to be experiential learning for community members. It is a way through which we can get to know each other, because when we see each other as human beings and not as the other, we begin to understand each other's hopes and dreams more fully.
