Jennie Brooks, host of the Unstoppable Together podcast, chats with Yanira Arias, a member of Booz Allen’s Latin American Network. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Yanira reflects on her immigration story and how her early career experiences have influenced how she strives to give back to her community and build equity.
Jennie Brooks:
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together podcast, a series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton, and I'm passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with a diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Unstoppable Together podcast. I'm your host, Jennie Brooks. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Yanira Arias, member of Booz Allen's Latin American Network Board. Welcome to the podcast, Yanira.
Yanira Arias:
Thank you for having me.
Jennie Brooks:
It's great to speak with you today. You've shared that you're an immigrant to the United States. Can you start by sharing with us your immigration story?
Yanira Arias:
Well, my family and I arrived in 1987 as my parents fled the civil war in El Salvador. We were seeking asylum. My mother had migrated to the United States first and had arrived in Los Angeles to meet with other family members who had already made the voyage here. We, meaning my sister and I, came after with my father. I remember seeing the large palm trees when we first arrived in Los Angeles and the city lights, and it was a very surreal experience for me. When I arrived in LA, it was very different as I got used to going to the schools here and the cultural changes.
Jennie Brooks:
How old were you, if you don't?
Yanira Arias:
Seven years old when I arrived. We had actually lived in Mexico for a period of a year before reuniting with my mother, and we actually lived in very, very poor conditions then. Once we arrived in LA, my first or the memories that I have are more of school and of having to go out into the blacktop and doing our earthquake drills because, you know, LA. We lived close to MacArthur Park. I just remember being in a building, it was a very old building, and whenever there was an earthquake, we would have to go out the fire escape. My father would have to grab me in the middle of the night and kind of run down the fire escape. So most of my memories are of that.
Until then, my dad had a hard time finding work, so he ended up coming to Virginia because another family member mentioned that they would be able to help him find work here. So when my father left, we followed about a year later. We arrived in Virginia around 1988 with my mother. However, when we arrived my father felt ill. He had a condition where one of his kidneys was the size of a small cookie. Because of it, his other kidney had gone into kidney failure. So unfortunately, when we arrived, my mother soon became sort of a single mom because my dad was in and out of hospitals for a very long time. He would go into dialysis weekly. I ended up having to have issues in my schooling because I was the one that was going into the hospitals to help with the translation and talk to doctors.
I'm very grateful, though, because I have to say that during the time period of my elementary and middle school years, I had some teachers and some counselors that were very helpful and were supportive. I remember having a mentor in middle school who really took me under her wing and helped me get through my classes while my father was going through all this transition. Eventually my dad got a transplant in about 1992 and things got better.
But I think that, for me, coming to the United States has always been a situation where I thank God that he's always brought the right people into my life at the right time. Because had it not been for some of those individuals that took the time to get to know me, get to know my family, help us out, I don't think we would've gotten through a lot of the things that we went through. For us, church was a very big part of our life, our local community, and nonprofit groups that supported the areas that we lived in at that time because we were in the [inaudible 00:04:18] Church area.
It was very challenging for us. When we first arrived, my mother did her best in maintaining the home and being financially responsible for us when my father had moments of whether he could work or not work. Thankfully, my dad worked for Marriott at that time. He was a cook at the Hot Shoppes. That's where he worked. His employer was very supportive of him. So I have to say that in that we were always thankful also because he definitely went through a lot of challenges when we first got here.
Jennie Brooks:
That's an extraordinary story. Thank you for sharing. Stepping back for a minute, what is the conversation like when you're five or six at home and your parents are speaking with you about the journey that you're going to leave to try and go to the United States? Do you remember that conversation? You would've been fairly young.
Yanira Arias:
My dad, so I was about six, five and a half going on six when we left with my dad from Mexico. There was no conversation. It was more of, "We're leaving," and we're with my dad.
Jennie Brooks:
Your mother had gone ahead first, and she'd been gone for a year.
Yanira Arias:
Over a year.
Jennie Brooks:
So you had been without your mom for a year.
Yanira Arias:
For a year.
Jennie Brooks:
Do you remember what that was like?
Yanira Arias:
It was hard because my dad worked. He worked all day. Basically, we lived in what was a hospital that was being constructed, so we didn't really have a home. We actually just lived in the construction site. That was what was given to my dad for us to stay in. My dad was sort of what we call security guard, but he was the watchman. That's what they call it. He would be responsible for maintaining, ensuring that nobody came into the property and took things that they weren't supposed to, things like that. Then he was in charge of making sure that, when the constructions workers would come and work during the day, he was overseeing that as well.
Technically, my sister and I were in just a room that was already a concrete room that was going to eventually be one of the patient areas. We didn't really have a bed or anything. Actually, my uncle, who also was with us at that time, made a bed for us from just wooden sticks and, believe it or not, rubber from rubber tires. I don't know how to explain it. So our bed was made out of these wooden planks, wooden sticks, however you want to call it. He just basically stretched the rubber out sort of crisscross, and that was our bed. Then we had a mosquito net over our bed. That, for us, was very fancy back in the day. I think my sister and I spent our time playing with the dog that we had there. It was just a stray dog that happened to be there and that would come in from time to time.
I did go to school in Mexico. I went to kindergarten. That was hard because we had means, so a lot of the time I went without meals. I would get meals when I would get home. My father tried very hard to do his best with us as well. Like I tell my children now. I know they complain about food sometimes. I'm like, "At least you're not eating with salt and sugar." I said, "So just be happy for what's on your table." So I try to teach them that they need to be a little bit more grateful with what they have compared to what I had.
It definitely wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to transition to come. It wasn't an easy transition not to be without my mother. I think, for us, it's still a little challenging to have a close connection because of that, at least for me. I'm definitely much closer to my father than I am to my mother from time to time. But it does. It impacts your relationship with your parents. As much as you wouldn't want it to, it does.
Now I look back at it, I know they made sacrifices. They were young themselves. They weren't older than 19, 20 when all this was transitioning. So they didn't know any better, and they did their best to what they thought they needed to do. Leaving the war for my dad was more because of family members that had been killed, and they were afraid for their lives. So back in the day it was like, "What do we do?" I was already here, and my sister was on her way. So they made that journey, the decision that they needed to find a way to make sure that we had a better life.
Jennie Brooks:
So you arrive in Los Angeles and your memories there, of course, of the palm trees and school memories, the asphalt, and games. Then you make the journey to Virginia. You discussed, still at a young age, you're now traversing a hospital environment to translate with medical care, health care providers for your father's care, which is also just extraordinary to me, because at such a young age, really, that's quite significant responsibility. How did those experiences then shape your view of equity and access and other components of your career or your personal life as an adult in the United States?
Yanira Arias:
I'm going to be very honest. I wasn't thinking about equity. What I was thinking about is, since I started work... I started working at a very young age. I was about 15, 16, but it was more of-
Jennie Brooks:
What was your first job? If I can ask you, what was it?
Yanira Arias:
I worked at Arby's. I did. I worked at Arby's. I worked at Bally's Total Fitness as a babysitter for the customers when they would come in. But my real first job was at Arby's because that's where my mother worked. So my mother had me come in. Well, actually, at first, she got a job at Wendy's. Me and my sister would go with them on the weekends because they didn't have anyone to care for us. So we would just sit there in the lobby and wait for her to get out of work, and we would help her clean tables. That was kind of our weekend to do.
Then my mom basically worked at Arby's. So as I got older, she helped me get a job with her where she was working. I remember the business owner. He was really nice, a really nice man. I actually worked most of my... At the beginning of my high school or around my high school years, I think it was, that I started there. I was about 16. It was just the weekend. It was just so I could get money to buy my own clothes. For a very long time, most of our support that we received, as I said, came from the church. So it wasn't like we had a chance to, let's say, go shopping. You know what I mean? We really depended a lot on these nonprofits, the area food banks that would help us get through some of those challenging times. So for me, it was more of being able to help and being able to be independent to help myself and be able to move into a position of financial stability for myself, not for anyone else. So I didn't really understand the term of equity.
I worked with a school, Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School. They provide access to English learning to the immigrant community in the Washington, DC, area. They also provide a lot of culinary and job skills trainings. I really enjoyed working there. I enjoyed giving back to my community in that way. I also worked for a Latina-style magazine very early in my career where I learned about the importance of being an entrepreneur.
After that, I worked for a public relations firm that basically about social change, about making communities better and basically being able to discuss human rights and civil rights and engaging in the arts. So I learned a lot there. I did a lot of media relations, public relations work, and marketing during that time. A lot of the experience I have also comes from doing events and activities with the Hispanic community. A lot of the national Latino organizations that are local to the Washington, DC, area provide a lot of different resources and information to the Latino community that not everybody knows about.
I think right now for me, in terms of building equity, it's about being able to tap into those resources and letting the community know, "Hey, these resources are here, and we are all here to help encourage you to move forward, to be successful, and have a better life for yourself and for your children." So for me, equity right now is more about the gratitude that I have to those people that paved the way to let us get into positions of leadership and encouraged me to take that next step in my career and push forward. I've been able to purchase my home, my first home a few years back.
Jennie Brooks:
Congratulations.
Yanira Arias:
A great achievement for me, thank you, because I always thought I wanted to be able to say my kids have a place of their own. Growing up, we had to share. My family didn't have the means. We would all be in a little one-bedroom apartment and one bed. We would share. That's how we... Well, what we had to do. But I tell the girls all the time and my son, I'm like, "You guys have your own rooms. You don't have to share." So for me, that's important. That's building equity. Now I have something that I can say... can go to them. My goal is to... I always say, "I want to give. I want to give back to everyone." I'm not trying to be a burden on anyone. I'm always trying to find a way to help others, even if it's in the small things, volunteering, being able to give back to those community organizations that gave back to me. That's sort of my goal. That's how I see equity now.
Jennie Brooks:
Thank you for sharing, Yanira. As I'm thinking about the lessons that you're instilling in your children, what advice would you have for those listening in terms of how to work across cultural differences? What has worked for you along this very significant journey that you've been on?
Yanira Arias:
I think that, for me, it's about kindness and showing kindness to others no matter their background, cultural background. There's a song that I like from Mandisa that's called We All Bleed the Same. At the end of the day, we're all human. We all have different struggles. Everybody has different backgrounds, different backgrounds on how they were raised, their faith, just in general. We don't all have that same upbringing, but we are all human. We're all here in this world together, so we have to learn to love on one another a little bit more and not be so angry or hurt for things that sometimes we can't control. It's hard to do that.
Like I said, I've gone through two areas of my life that were very painful due to my choices and to the fact that I was hopeful in certain things, but I was let down. I've learned that a lot of the time we put so much energy into trying to get people to accept us and trying to get people to be okay with who we are, but we can't change them. We can't change those individuals. We have to accept who we are and love ourselves and, as such, love them. Because at the end of the day, they've gone through their own sets of struggles and challenges that we don't know about.
Jennie Brooks:
You're very active in the community. You're involved in Booz Allen's Latin American Network and the national organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and others, as you've shared. What inspired you to get more involved with those groups?
Yanira Arias:
Well, I joined the firm about three years ago. I wanted to be able to give back to my community. I learned that we had the Latin American Network here, and they were seeking board members. I was referred to them, and I decided that I wanted to be able to participate and engage and just give back to my community. A lot of the time, our community isn't aware of things that are happening. I enjoy sharing and being able to participate in activities and events. It's something that I've done in my past is event planning.
I figured this would be a great way for me to interact and get to know other people in the firm and also be able to give back. I joined the Virginia League of United Latin American Citizens Council for 613 this year mainly for that reason. With COVID hitting and everybody being shut in, I wanted to get out there and get to know people. The election process lately has also been very important. So I finally just decided it's time for me to engage and get people and get the young adults in our community involved. A lot of our youth is still learning and growing and wanting to learn more about the opportunities out there. Like I said, in the DC Metro area, there are plenty. These national Latino organizations provide opportunities for career development-
Jennie Brooks:
Scholarships.
Yanira Arias:
... a lot for our Latino community. So I just wanted to give back. This year, the Virginia League of United Latin American Citizens is holding its first convention out in Richmond in September. They are going to be talking about education and the state of education, the state of immigration, and the state of health in the Latino community. So I engage to be able to provide that information and to also connect with some of our local community members through our church groups and just through the work that I do now to be able to do that.
Jennie Brooks:
So well said. We could probably end the podcast right there, Yanira. But at the end of every podcast, we still leave a little open space for our guests to share their final thoughts. What else would you leave with our audience today?
Yanira Arias:
Well, I think for me, I'm just thankful of the place that I'm in my life right now. Like I said, I'm grateful to all those individuals that paved the way for me to be able to be here. I'm grateful to all the individuals that I work with today. They're very smart and knowledgeable people, and I learn from them every day. I'm grateful to all of our veterans and all of our military personnel that go out there every day and try to strive so that we can all have a wonderful place to live.
For me, I'm just grateful. I try to live my life in a way where I'm looking at the positive. It's hard. It's not easy. I can't tell you it's easy because it's not. There have been moments when I've really had a hard time even pushing myself. But because of my family, because of the close relationships that I have with co-workers and the people that God brings into my life, I've been able to be successful. I think that, for me, I enjoy being a support to my team and to the people that I work with every day because I know they're working out there hard for us to be able to have a very successful life, a life of freedom, and I am grateful to them every, every, every day. So anything that I can do on my end that encourages them or at least lifts them up a little bit in their day is something that I'm grateful for.
Jennie Brooks:
Thank you, Yanira.
Yanira Arias:
Thank you.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks for listening. Visit careers.boozallen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future. Work with us. The world can't wait.