Build Where You Are, And Be Who You Are!

It sounds simple, but it’s not. Building a strong foundation and growing yourself and your business with authenticity is a real challenge. We struggle, because we are not building from scratch. We are building on top of our past, both personal and collective, and history is messy. In many times and in many ways we are not building the business or the person we were meant to be, but a copy of someone else’s idea of success, someone else’s example of excellence.

For me, the blueprint for my life came from my father. Parents shape us in incredible ways, whether we will it or not, their love and acceptance is all we ever want. My dad died when I was 19 years old under very difficult circumstances, and I’ve spent most of my adulthood living in his shadow, wondering if he would approve of the man I became, and trying to walk in his shoes even when I knew those shoes were the wrong size and painful to wear, would blister my feet, and hurt those that I loved. When I think of my father, I think of a trailblazer, first in his family to graduate from the City College of New York, first Puerto Rican superintendent in NYC school’s in the early 1970s, the glue that kept our extended family together. He was a fighter who grew up defending his family, his neighborhood, and ultimately a piece of that American pie. He came from the generation of Nuyoricans like Herman Badillo and Bobby Garcia who became the first Latinos in the U.S. to become congressman, was close with David Dinkins during his ascendency to become New York City’s first Black mayor, and had this crushing weight to be self-important, to be seen, and to have dignidad (dignity) in a world that viewed Puerto Ricans as the permanent underclass.

I inherited my father’s drive like I inherited his name. He took his own life on January 6, 1993, 30 years ago today, and I have been fighting his fight ever since. When he could no longer carry the world on his shoulders, I picked it up for him. Always the underdog, I wanted to be the future King David to the Goliaths of the world. I may not have grown up during the Great Depression in Spanish Harlem, or come of age in the South Bronx, I wasn’t on the negotiation team at Attica, or in Brownsville during the decentralization fights over community schools… These were the experiences that shaped him and his generation. I grew up more privileged, the son of a trailblazer, but I could always look at the world, and the elite, as the enemy, and carry that chip on my shoulder into college, into my work in public education, into my leadership in the nonprofit sector, and into my life as an entrepreneur. That fire fueled the hard work, the hustle and drive to prove that I too belonged, and in a world that decides too early and too arbitrarily who wins and who loses, who has access to opportunity and who does not, I still believe we can change the game. Whether it is Mott Haven or Silicon Valley, there is always a mountain to climb and a battle to be fought. But that level of urgency has a price. And the greatest battles come from within.

What would it be like to honor my father, but not carry his world on my shoulders? Who could I, who could we become, if we made peace with our past, accepted?our losses, and found our own authentic voice.

This is what I know to be true…

It’s exhausting to carry the world on your shoulders, and it’s unnecessary. We awake each day into a world we did not create, into a story that will continue long after we are gone.

Our perfection does not depend on self-importance or the thoughts and opinions of others. You do not need to be validated to be loved.

This fear that we are going to be left behind, that someone else’s success, or some other company or organization's growth diminishes your own worth is a fallacy. We live in a world of abundance and our systems should reflect that truth.

We are loved, we are loved, we are loved! And we are forgiven.

I am no better than anyone, and no one is better than me.

Performance is more important than pedigree.?

Build where you are and be who you are! The world does not need an imitation of someone else. You exist for a purpose. Fall in love with that purpose, that spark, that unique insight, talent, sensitivity… and share it with the world.

We are here for a reason, and that reason is shared prosperity. I do not claim to truly understand shared prosperity, or embody it in any special way, but I yearn for it, and I believe you do too. Because shared prosperity is the belief that we can all win. It goes against the American grain, and yet leads to the fulfillment of the real American Dream.

Building where you are and being who you were meant to be is all you need in 2023!