The pie less travelled

For two decades, Sergio Medina has built and led child protection programs and efforts for several UN agencies and international NGOs. The core of his work has been advocating for and implementing protective services for unaccompanied refugee and immigrant children, in the U.S. and in refugee camps across East Africa. He is using business, technology, design, and every tool at his disposal, to drive social impact for refugee children. Sergio and his team are using system dynamics to design, develop, and deploy globally scalable interventions in response to Covid-19.

I have strong feelings about income inequality — based on my own experience and through my work.  This is a story worth sharing from an income inequality, macroeconomic, and system dynamics perspective, with the hopes that in doing so, readers can understand just how intertwined income inequality is to race.

Longitudinal analysis of the multiple dimensions of life in America has shown that African-Americans/Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos (Mexican-Americans and Central-Americans, in particular) are disproportionately represented among the poor.  One very close layer beneath income inequality is race; and they are both inextricably linked.

The proven fact that if you are Black or Latino you are more likely to live in poverty is a result of decades of institutional racism, discrimination, and oppressive judicial and service systems that perpetuate, and amplify, inequities that persist to become and remain intractable without broad systems change and reform.

Today, all across the U.S., if you are Black or Latino, mountains of evidence show that you are more likely to have poor health outcomes, be incarcerated, and die at an age earlier than compared to the general population.  If you are a woman, you are more likely to have a preterm birth, become pregnant at an earlier age, and your children are more likely to die during childbirth.  Black and Latino mothers are more likely to get sent home from the hospital earlier than white counterparts post-childbirth.  

If you are Black or Latino, you are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or heart disease, or diabetes, all things being equal.  Health inequities by race are a proven and ugly fact.  If you are Black or Latino, you are more likely to lose your home from foreclosure, be in foster care, or be homeless. You are more likely to experience Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are proven to drive future health disparities.  As teenagers and adults, Blacks and Latinos experience more individual and community trauma.

If you are Black or Latino, you are less likely to complete high school, less likely to pursue or complete an AA, a BA, an MS, or PhD and benefit from those increases in income. Even if you attain those degrees, Blacks or Latinos see less effect on their income compared to white and Asian counterparts.  If you are Black or Latino, you are less likely to be funded by a VC or a foundation, you are less likely to be a CEO or a VP of a company, and you are less likely to be represented in commercials and movies in proportion to your population representation in American society.

Given this harsh reality, and the even worse reality that every human being has the same capacity and potential to achieve, learn, shine, and create just as much as the other person, this is a hard pill to swallow for everyone.  Why are these health, economic, social, judicial, educational, development, and life-altering outcomes the experience of millions and millions of Black and Latino communities in the U.S., on average?  The truth is the hardest reality to face.  As a society, what have we done to create this situation?  And better yet, how are we going to ever fix this?  Worse yet, are we even able to fix it?  I invite you to read on about my experience, through the lens of this bleak reality, as we all ponder this profound question.

I was born in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Houston, TX, to Mexican-American parents.  My dad was undocumented, and my mom didn’t finish high school.  Both parents were migrant farm workers at several points in their life.  My dad picked apples and alfalfa; my mom picked cotton and watermelon.  My dad was a sign painter and my mom was an office custodian and child care worker.

We lived in an extremely poor environment and household growing up.  Our community was plagued by the same ills that we faced.  We were on food stamps, we were sometimes on Medicaid, or had no health insurance whatsoever and would only use the emergency room when we got really sick. I didn’t have a pediatrician, a dentist, or see an optometrist until I had problems seeing.  There was no preventive care, just reactive.

As school children, my siblings and I benefited from free school lunches, and when I was 12, we lost our house and moved into a 2-bedroom trailer, all 5 of us.  At times, all 10 of us crammed into a 3-bedroom house.  I didn’t know we were poor, or that our situation was not the norm until I visited my friend’s home in first grade.  In first grade, I just didn’t understand how my best friend’s home and family were so vastly different.

In second grade, I was passed over for the school’s Gifted and Talented Program, which consisted of only Caucasian/white kids.  A Latina teacher (Mrs. DeLeon, who I still want to find) was infuriated by this. After learning about this outcome, she marched into the principal’s office and told him they had made a grave mistake by not including me.  The next year, I was enrolled in G&T, and was exposed to the beaming beauty of a robust education.

Back when I was entering kindergarten, and it was time to choose a school, my parents had a major choice to make.  Based on where I lived,  I could choose to go to the predominately white and wealthier school.  My half-brothers, who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, were directed to a predominantly Latino school because of their zip code, and we had wildly different outcomes. What would have become of me had I gone to the other school?

Growing up, there was no expectation that I would go to college, and I’m the only one in my family to do so.  I was fortunate to be accepted into, and go to, Rice University where 80% of my tuition was covered because my EFC was $0.  I was fortunate to go to Columbia University, thereafter, for my social work degree, and was fortunate to attend Stanford GSB for a certificate in social entrepreneurship.  At MIT Sloan I felt beyond fortunate as MIT covered about 60% of my tuition.  I learned that I am only the second social worker to go to Sloan.  I am receiving a world-class global management education, and I am grateful.

I used to be in the bottom 2%.  Now, I’m in the top 2%, and I’m absolutely livid with the injustice that is brazenly apparent in our society for Black and Latino communities.  I run two nonprofits that advance the rights of individuals who are either low-income, Black or Latino, refugee or immigrant, trafficked or displaced, or otherwise marginalized in the U.S. or globally.  I have three startups and I have become an expert in child protection and in social justice.  I am not your typical CEO or executive; I am my client, or more precisely, the client I used to be.  The imposter syndrome that I feel today began in kindergarten, and toggles between feeling that I should have a seat at the table to feeling that I don’t belong at the table.

I now own a Victorian home in San Francisco with my partner, Michael, and by all accounts, I’m successful. But still, my family suffers, and my identity toggles between global social entrepreneur poised for great things, with boundless opportunity before me, and that gay kid from Cloverleaf who doesn’t know if their electricity or water will be turned off when I get home, or if there will be enough money for groceries or school lunch.

My two older sisters both had 4 kids by the age of 21. My brother was in and out of prison for decades. So many in my family experienced the throes of addiction, violence, poverty, and economic struggle.  Three of my brothers had epilepsy, two were disabled, and my younger brother died early from cancer; and worse, and worse, and worse.  My mother, Mellie, died early, and my father was the cause of untold family pain and suffering.

In spite of all this, my strong, intelligent, and resilient mother gave me a gift of a lifetime.  She was quick to speak out about racial, ethnic, economic, and legal injustice that she witnessed and experienced in our communities.  She marched for worker rights.  She marched with massive picket signs for justice for Blacks and Latinos.  She taught me that every single human being on the planet is invaluable, and she inspired me to dedicate my life to public service to fight and advocate for the underdog.  I fight for her.  I fight for me, and I fight for others like us.  

I came to MIT with an agenda to build human and social capital and capacity, and credibility, to fight the good fight, and advocate for the little Sergios and Mellies of the world.  Truth be told, the bar I have to clear is higher than my counterparts.  It is the bare truth.  In response to this lack of a head start, I have been amassing a track and professional record that, hopefully, will clear any doubt that not only am I capable of, but that I am poised to, achieve great things in service to others.

Today, I am on a mission to make sure that everyone knows that no matter how poor, how Black; how brown, how foreign; how different, or how forgotten people think you are, you bring incredible value to our society.  My mission-in-action is to build organizations, systems, and programs that convert that idealistic mission into systems change.  

We, as a society, need to lift everyone up, and not just ourselves on the backs of the poor and the Black and brown.  There is only one global pie. Let everyone eat a share of the pie. And let us not fall into the fallacy that more pie creation will necessarily result in everyone having more pie, especially when our systems of pie acquisition and pie hoarding, at the expense of others, is institutionally ingrained and must be undone; at scale.  We can, and must, course-correct and pursue fundamental and monumental change if we are ever to have an equal and distributed pie party.

Sergio Medina, EMBA ’20, is the founder and CEO of the social enterprise RISE in San Francisco, CA.