A Latina is on the board of the Lee Institute. Her name is Gina Esquivel - a native of Costa Rica who in recent years has built her career as a consultant focused on social impact initiatives. However, her life did not always look this way. She arrived in the U.S. without knowing how to speak English.
Starting with no contacts, no experience, and no language
Gina came to Charlotte in 1995. She was just 22 years old when she began working as a laborer in a factory that produced tables and desks. By this point, she had already completed her bachelor’s degree in Costa Rica, thanks to her mother, who had taught her the importance of getting ahead through education and hard work.
"It took me two years until I could better understand English, even getting to the point where I could make jokes in English. It was after this that I began to work with nonprofit organizations. Some were health organizations, some assisted the Latino community, and later I went to work for the Levine Museum and Crisis Assistance, where I stayed for several years,” explained Esquivel.
While working for different organizations, she received her master’s degree in Change Management & Leadership from Pfeiffer University, as well as certifications in marketing, project management, strategic thinking, and community work. “At first, it was difficult because I had no experience or anyone in my family who had done something like this, so I had to do things the only way I knew how,” she said.
“They don’t see us Latinos in the same way”
Esquivel shares how working with organizations moved her to want to go into consulting. However, for various reasons, the conditions never presented themselves, “until a friend told me that if I didn’t do it then, there would never be a good time. That’s when I started my own consulting company,” she said.
Esquivel used her experience working in many organizations to understand how she could support her community and knowwhat she as a Latina was able to contribute. “I took notes every day of everything I was seeing and doing.” This was one of the strategies that allowed Gina to confront different situations she encountered when she eventually became a consultant.
The language, on the other hand, never stopped being a challenge:
“The ability to adapt to the languages of different people is a necessary skill. It’s like being a chameleon. This was difficult at first. I was nervous during some of my first projects because I was afraid that if I failed, it was as if my Latino community was failing. It was the weight of knowing that it was not Gina alone, but about showing that all Latinos can contribute to projects that do not necessarily involve the Latino community, so if I fail, my community fails, because they don't see us in the same way,” she said.
As a professional Latina with all of her experiences, she was able to present ideas and solutions "from another perspective.” It was a chance to show that one can achieve higher positions not only for being bilingual, but also for having intellectual abilities that should not be ignored.
Leaving your comfort zone
Gina highlights that after several years of working for her own company as a consultant, she was contacted by the Lee Institute, who offered her the opportunity to be part of their team.
“Before starting, I thought about what I had to offer, my 30 years of experience working for my community through social impact programs. During my first months, I studied how we could better represent the community we were serving,” she said.
The Lee Institute is a nonprofit organization founded in 1997 and named in honor of Bill Lee, an outstanding business and civic leader. The institute’s mission is to support the important community-changing work of other nonprofit, public, and community organizations, and leading and guiding collaborative efforts.
“What we do here is support the community, leaders, and organizations so that they can grow. We do not work directly with the population, but rather facilitate the process through independent organizations. As a consultant, I am involved in everything related to the development of strategies and recommendations for leadership development, research, analysis, statistics, understanding the impact of certain community decisions, and looking for content to move onto the project,” explains Esquivel.
On her functions and what characterizes the work of the Lee Institute, she explains:
“There are not any nonprofits that are dedicated to the type of work we do, mainly because this type of support is for businesses. But we established ourselves as a nonprofit because we are not looking to do business transactions with our community. We seek to build trust, a trajectory, a continuous back-and-forth exchange so that they can see we are not here for the money, but to support the growth of the population.”
“We Latinos do not do the easy jobs”
Today, Gina is on the board of the Lee Institute and also continues her role as a consultant in her own company. She works side-by-side with the Latino community, seeking its growth. For this reason, she delivered a series of recommendations to ensure that more and more, Latinos reach higher positions or can innovate within their businesses.
- Know yourself. For a professional, this is the first step before taking on a project. “You have to learn to listen to yourself and trust that you are physically, intellectually, and emotionally capable of doing it. The intellectual level, especially as you have to measure yourself using a different scale.”
- Surround yourself with people who walk with you and help you find your way. “It’s important to understand that you cannot do it alone.”
- Let yourself be known. “In this country, people do not have to get to know you - you have to put yourself out there. When you know what you can do well, claim it, let people know, and stay in that lane until you achieve mastery.”
- “You do not have to do or know everything to be good. You can master one thing and after that focus on the details,” she advises.
- Seek out the competition. For Gina, the key before starting was to go to other cities to talk with people who had similar projects and ask them for advice about how they got started.
- Never give up. “You have to know that there will be difficult times, and you can overcome them. Success is not in creating a business, but rather in keeping it alive,” she said.
Lastly, Gina points out, “The work is not easy, but we Latinos do not do the easy jobs. One of our characteristics as immigrants is that we are resilient when faced with failure. We progress as a result of the challenge.”
Find this story in Spanish here.