Outstanding Service to ALPFA

To our ALPFA Members:

First, I’d like to apologize for the few month’s of dead space. Like we all do, just got super busy. As many know, our NY Chapter was award chapter of the year and I was also personally awarded an award for outstanding service to ALPFA.

What I thought I do is share my acceptance speech. I had posted it on FB but I wanted to give all our members a chance to read it.

I’d like to start by thanking ALPFA, for providing me with a platform to build Latino Leaders. I’m humbled in accepting this year’s Outstanding Service to ALPFA award because I know many of my peers work very hard at opening doors to a better tomorrow for our Latino Community. So I’d also like to share this award with all my fellow ALPFA leaders who have done great work this year.

I never set my sights on any personal awards, my only goal was to help as many Latinos as possible and I felt ALPFA provided the best platform to achieve that goal. I did not grow up with ALPFA as a student or young professional, I joined ALPFA because I was helping UBS with their diversity strategy and we chose ALPFA as our Latino Partner. I only started working on UBS’ diversity initiative because a friend, some 15 years ago, called me a coconut. I said, what are you talking about? She tells me, you look brown on the outside but your blanquito on the inside. She was right, I did not want to be known for being Latino, I wanted to be accepted by the Financial Service’s community as a peer, a colleague who did great business work and not for the color of my skin. So I avoided anything to do with diversity for most of my career.

In 2004, my CFO asked me if I would represent the Finance Division on the firm’s diversity task force. I responded no, and suggested another colleague. He says, I trust you and this will also give you great senior management exposure. I still said NO. He then said, let me put it to you this way, you don’t have a choice. First meeting is tomorrow, go and report back, you’ll do great. Following orders, I went through the motions doing more listening then leading and it was more general diversity then helping our Latino Community.

Two years ago, I still had that same bird on my shoulder, chirping about how I can do more for our Latino Community and in 2010, the CFO role for ALPFA NY was vacant and I decided to apply. I barely got elected. My views, enthusiasm, leadership skills and recommendations all said yes and counter balanced my lack of tenure as an ALPFA member; but I could not spell ALPFA right for the life of me; I’ve since changed my spell checker to include the correct version of ALPFA.

During my service as NY Chapter CFO, our team grew our membership from 1,200 to 2,200. We got the board energized, our membership engaged and our corporate partners interested in doing more with ALPFA. 2010 – 2011 was really just the beginning. The first year in ALPFA was focused on learning from the many past Presidents like Genaro Perez, Steve Mendez, Alberto Flores, Santiago Carmona, Hector Perez, Theresa Torres and Juan Cruz, who went out of their way to help me learn about the organization quickly. These leaders all helped me achieve the ALPFA learning curve and transition into the ALPFA familia; I am grateful for their endless support.

I’d also like to thank Jessica Ascencio, the first person I met at the ALPFA Leadership retreat in 2010; she introduced me to so many people, my head was spinning. Since then, Jessica has become a close friend and part of my ALPFA NY Corporate Advisory Board. A huge thank you to Ann Marquez, our NY Chapter Executive Director at the time, for lending her thought leadership and always challenging our team to be better. Ann has moved on to a different chapter in her life andwe will miss her leadership. Ann, we all wish you the best.

2011 – 2012 has been a great year for ALPFA NY. After reaching 2,200 members, sustaining those numbers was going to be a challenge but we not only maintained our numbers, we are the first chapter to break 3,000 members and we are currently at about 3,100. We are roughly 25 members away from reaching another milestone, 100 NY Lifetime Members. I urge you all here to deepen your commitment to building Latino business leaders by taking advantage of National’s generous Lifetime Member promotion for $500 if you sign up here at convention.

This year we added more corporate partners and enhanced our programming to provide leadership development at every level of our membership, from student to executive. We had many programming firsts this year thanks to a phenomenal team that listened to our members’ and sponsors’ needs: we held our first Twitter event, and launched ALPFA Law, borrowing a page from our Boston Chapter, led by Camille Marcos’ vision and leadership; we explored executive level development topics such as “The Value of Serving on a Corporate Board”, and our Power Breakfast Series; we successfully launched our Veteran initiative, signing up over 150 veterans; our Student Affairs team and Chapter Coordinator Ariana Simmons held a Saturday resume writing/mock interview series this summer to prepare our students; we held our first student graduation ceremony, honoring our student chapter leaders for their service to ALPFA; finally, we ran our first capital campaign, raising $13k, and funding 20 students’ attendance to this convention. In all these successes, there is another person I need to thank: Cindy Saad, our New York Executive Director. While I share this award with all of our ALPFA leaders, I’d also like to share this recognition with Cindy, who has been my partner in ALPFA throughout this year. Thank you.

I know I’m running out of time but these awards are earned through the collective work and support of many people. I’d like to thank all our NY Corporate Partners, without them, we cannot deliver our mission to our members and community. I’d like to thank the entire NY board, I know I push hard and I ask for a lot but I appreciate the fact that you all give it 110 percent. I could spend all day mentioning each person on my board by name but I’d like to name five people: Josue Napa, who’s been my CFO this year and has worked closely with me on vision and various ideas; Janet Rodriguez, last year’s winner of the most promising professional award who oversees our 15 student chapters with all her heart, and over 1,200 student members, having built a first class model for shaping our students into chapter leaders; John Hernandez, who has put in a great structure to manage corporate partner relationships and has made it easier to ensure we are delivering on value; Jonathan Cifuentes, who is the creative genius around all our flyers and social media ads along with his brother Kevin, or as we refer to them dearly, “the IT Twins”, and to Manny Espinoza, our National CEO, who spends a lot of time serving as a personal mentor and advisor to me, and has provided the guidance to allow our chapter to succeed, a true leader with passion.

I also would not be here without the support of my family and my firm, UBS. I have spent a lot of time on ALPFA this year and I know my family, especially my kids, Ashley and Jason, have not had me around the house as much, but I love them dearly.

In closing, I’d like to leave everyone with an action point. As I said in the beginning, ALPFA provides a great platform for building Latino Leaders but the platform does not do anything by itself, if we as members do not actively help our Latino Community aspire to greatness. I know there is power in numbers and we have some of the strongest, most talented and passionate Latino Leaders sitting in this room. In the US, we are over 51.0mm Latinos and ALPFA has slightly over 20,000 members. That means we have a great opportunity to help so many more people. WE, all need to actively do more. My ask is that if everyone here helps one person learn the value of being in an organization like ALPFA, then we can help so many more and in the process, we can help grow this organization from over 20,000 members to over 40,000 members. I am sure Manny will agree here, but my hope is that for our 41st National Convention next year, we can say we are now 40,000 members strong, and we can do that if each of us reaches just 1 person in 2013.