Rep. Ricky Hurtado: Connecting the Dots on Educational, Racial & Gender Equity

A son of working-class immigrants, Ricky grew up in rural North Carolina and is a product of public schools. A first-generation college student, Ricky’s dream finally came true when he was accepted into UNC-Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. He found his passion for public service while at UNC, mentoring other high school students who grew up in similar circumstances and were working hard to make their own dreams come true. He attended graduate school at Princeton University, focusing on how to create effective public policy to fight poverty and inequality and build strong, vibrant communities.

After a brief time as a consultant and policy analyst supporting nonprofits and foundations across the country, Ricky became an instructor at UNC Chapel Hill and is co-executive director of LatinxEd, an education initiative helping other first-generation college students and immigrant families break down barriers to educational opportunity. In November 2020, he was also elected as the House Representative for District 63 (Alamance County), becoming the first Latinx Democrat to ever be elected in the history of the North Carolina General Assembly.

“I’m asking, what does it look like to really build strong, healthy villages? For our children, for our families, for our community. As we recover, if we think about it solely from a policy perspective, we’ll ask questions like — How do we get kids back in school? How do we get our businesses off the ground? Obviously all that is incredibly important, but so is — How do we rebuild the social fabric of our communities?”

Kristine: The very first important part of this conversation is that when I googled you, I saw on your Wikipedia page that your birthday is December 7th, 1988. Mine is December 20th, 1988. We were born 13 days apart. It’s very exciting to me.

Ricky: Same month, same year. I mean, come on. It doesn’t get any closer. I was on the phone yesterday with someone and her birthday was on December 9th. I don’t know if it was the same year. I also had the same reaction as you, that I was like, Oh my God!

Kristine: We are too excited — it’s very Sagittarius of us.

Ricky: Yes.

Kristine: Okay. So in my preparation for this conversation, I saw you teach at UNC, you co-founded LatinxEd, you’re now a State Representative in the NC General Assembly — how many jobs do you have?

Ricky: You could technically count it as three jobs. I am currently really doing two jobs. I’m an adjunct instructor at the School of Education at UNC, but that’s part of my full-time gig in general, because I’m also one of the co-founders of LatinxEd, which is a nonprofit that works on issues of identity in college access, education, and equity for the LatinX community in North Carolina. That nonprofit is actually housed at the UNC School of Education through a partnership we built with the school. And then obviously I just got elected to the General Assembly, to the House of Representatives. That “part-time job” is really full-time and it’s taking up most of my time right now. Thankfully I have an incredible team behind me on all sides of this equation. And the Dean of the School of Ed was gracious enough to relieve me of my teaching duties this semester to let me catch my breath, to let me figure out what I’m doing. I’ll be teaching again in the Fall.

Kristine: How are you balancing — or maybe how do you think about balance — in your life?

Ricky: I’d say I’m thinking about balance more than actually balancing. I hope more lawmakers are honest about that reality. You’ve got to keep a second job to feed your family unless you’re independently wealthy. But this is a full-time job and we need some structural changes to our democracy for us to get better policy making at the state and local levels. The only way I’ll be able to balance is through the support of my incredible teams. The team at LatinxEd — shout out to my co-founder Elaine Utin — have been holding down the fort since I made the decision to run for office and campaign for office and now serve in office. And that’s no small thing, because we’re still really young as an organization. We’re entering our third year and experiencing all of the trials and tribulations of a nonprofit and a startup sort of environment.

Balance is tricky. Without a lot of grace, it’s impossible — and there’s certainly a lot of sacrifice. My biggest worry — because I can sort of figure out the work part by just working all of the time, right — is then how much time does that actually leave for my family and for my friends? Unfortunately the friends part of the equation isn’t really in existence right now, but I certainly make time to talk to my parents and spend time with my wife. I don’t know — you can check in with me in three months to see how I’m doing.

Kristine: I’ll do that. I will.

Kristine: This spring, as Leadership Triangle builds towards our annual THRiVE summit, we’re really focused on the two core elements of our mission — educating and building community around issues facing the Triangle region, and developing the transformative leadership capacity we’ll need to address those issues. From your perspective, what are the issues that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and how are you thinking about mobilizing around those issues?

Ricky: I mean, I could dive into a million policy issues related to health education and economic insecurity, but I won’t do that. I actually think about it more conceptually right now, given the state of our democracy and the tension we’ve seen at the national and local level. I’m focused on trust-building and the impact of isolation, both physical and spiritual, on us. I’m focused on building the mutual understanding in our communities that when one of us is sick or one of us is hurting, all of us are hurting. And you’re not going to get that understanding through legislation.

You’re not going to get that through a grant, right. This is really it’s on all of us, right? I’m asking, what does it look like to really build strong, healthy villages? For our children, for our families, for our community. As we recover, if we think about it solely from a policy perspective, we’ll ask questions like — How do we get kids back in school? How do we get our businesses off the ground? Obviously all that is incredibly important, but so is — How do we rebuild the social fabric of our communities? We are hurting on a number of different levels and especially with the cloud of racial injustice that we’ve seen hanging over us. It’s going to require courageous conversations and leadership in non traditional ways. Individual, community members, churches, nonprofits, political leaders, business officials, everybody, right. All hands on deck. And I hope we don’t lose that urgency as we begin to reopen and recover from this pandemic later this year.

Kristine: How do we remind one another of our interdependence? I think we often talk about our need for our communities to come together and you’re speaking into this, that within that, there needs to be a shared understanding around equity and power and privilege and how power and privilege move through and shape community and belonging. So to have real community, real belonging, real understanding of interdependence — that for me looks like addressing the ways in which we have fractured ourselves for a long time, as a people. How do you think about that?

Ricky: That question took me to some of Brene Brown’s work right around shame and vulnerability, and really thinking about some of the things that are holding us back. I think this will have to happen on a micro level and over time we will begin to see the change percolate up. I think about things I learned on the campaign trail, where walking down the street and talking to a stranger and putting yourself out there really could change someone’s perspective. I’ve had people say to me, I never thought that I would vote for someone like you. I never thought I’d support someone like you. We’ve never had someone like you come to our neighborhood and ask us what’s on our mind or why we’re hurting. These simple conversations are really powerful conversations.

I don’t want to say, we just have to begin the dialogue and that’ll fix everything. Right. Because there’s genuine differences, but I do think we have to start somewhere. And I think that it’s going to take some of us sort of diving into the fray and being willing to have those courageous conversations to at least begin to think about what a thriving community looks like. I want to operate in that messiness because that’s honestly what gives me hope right now.

Kristine: Along those lines, it’s Black history month, you’re the first LatinX Democrat to be elected to the NC General Assembly, we’re experiencing a rise of hate crimes against Asian-Americans in this country. What is your intersectional approach to advancing equity in North Carolina?

Ricky: Another great question. And I think it sort of ties into what I was just mentioning, because I think some people may hear that and be like, we’re not going to kumbaya ourselves out of this mess. There’s genuine hurt and generational struggles around issues of racial equity that can’t be ignored. When I look at any issue, I approach it through that understanding. So much of the progress that’s been made in our country, and really this fight for this ideal of what we consider to be a democracy and what is right — all of our significant achievements are on the backs of Black Americans fighting for them. And so as someone who identifies as LatinX and the son of immigrants, someone who’s seeing the struggle of their parents, it’s not a far leap to recognize that some of the challenges that my parents face are intertwined with the structural barriers that our Black community members face. I have to recognize that many of the opportunities that my LatinX immigrant parents have are because of the fights and victories of Black Americans over the years.

I fully recognize that we stand on the shoulders of giants and that there is solidarity within working class folks who have always fought for expanded opportunity, civil rights, and workers rights in this country. There are untold parts of our history where there were those moments of solidarity, these multiracial movements for justice. I always show my students a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. with Cesar Chavez, as they were preparing for the Poor People’s campaign in 1968. I want to remind folks of that because we are in a changing multicultural nation. We are in a nation that is predicted by 2042 to be majority people of color. Those are the sorts of themes that we have to hold on to, to really understand, again, that there’s more that unites us than divides us. When we begin to recognize that intersectionality and commonality, I think we will be stronger and better for it.

Along the lines of equity, not just racial and ethnic equity, but also gender equity, we have to be really honest about who has been bearing the brunt of the weight of this pandemic. It’s women, it’s working moms, it’s folks who have really had to make choices between — do I stay at home and support my child through remote learning while sacrificing my career — things of that nature and what that means for the future of this nation, where we’re still having to make those choices. These are policy and crisis response failures where we don’t allow families to really take care of themselves in an equitable way. Those are the sorts of things I’m thinking about when I’m thinking about equity in North Carolina. I hope we can continue having these conversations and continue connecting the dots as we think about the systemic changes that are needed in North Carolina.

Kristine: Applications are open for the next round of 10 to Watch. Talk to me about your experience of being in that first class of 10 to Watch and how you’re hoping your experiences will help to shape and amplify the experience of the second cohort.

Ricky: 10 to Watch and the opportunity that came with it to become a Leadership Triangle Goodmon Fellow, was invaluable. I was in a really hectic moment in my life with LatinxED. I was burnt out. I was tired and I was almost angry that Leadership Triangle was forcing me to pause and reflect, because there was so much work to do. I’m just like, I don’t have time for this. Right. I’ve got to work. But the individual journey of realizing that those moments of reflection allow you to learn from your experiences, alongside the collective journey of that realization alongside your fellow classmates, really helped me reframe and understand that I wasn’t alone. That sense of community was an invaluable part of it. To be able to be vulnerable, to share each other’s struggles and opportunities and visions for the future. The people in that cohort are the same people that I continue to lean on today for organizational questions, personal questions, and funding questions. There are some brilliant people that I met on that journey. 10 to Watch was a boost, a platform to continue accelerating our work and our community, and an opportunity to recharge and reflect and think about what this work looks like for me in the long haul.

I’m excited about the next cohort. I’m excited to see what ideas people are working on. I obviously want them to create their own container and build their own community but also hopefully they connect with the first class, so that we can collaborate, magnify and amplify each other’s work. 20 is certainly stronger than 10.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our nation, both at the micro-community level and at the national level. We’re at a crossroads — we’re in a public health crisis, an economic crisis and a racial justice crisis. Think about how we all want to be remembered. Faced with a crisis, how did we respond?”

Kristine: Let’s say you’re in a room full of leaders in the Triangle. What would you say to them? What do you hope folks are thinking about and acting upon in their leadership right now?

Ricky: Lean into the discomfort. We are at a pivotal moment in our nation, both at the micro-community level and at the national level. We’re at a crossroads — we’re in a public health crisis, an economic crisis and a racial justice crisis. Think about how we all want to be remembered — faced with a crisis, how did we respond. It doesn’t have to be heroic. It’s that courageous conversation. It’s calling someone in or calling someone out if necessary. It’s listening to your community and thinking about a creative solution to the problem. It’s collaboration. It’s amplifying our solutions together. I hope we feel the urgency of moving forward together in this work.

“The first email that I got in my inbox on January 2nd, 2021 was from two 16 year olds. They said that they were inspired by my run for office and wanted to talk to me about some policies they wanted to see pass in North Carolina. I was like, done. You can have all day if you want. That’s what I live for. Incredible. Right?”

Kristine: What are you inspired by?

Ricky: What inspires me is the work of community members who don’t do it for the recognition or for the titles, or because they’re getting a paycheck. They are authentically working towards the betterment of their communities. When I get frustrated with the political elements of my work, or a fundraising application, or the struggles of the nonprofit world, I remind myself to connect with young people in my community and with community members who are at the front lines of so much of this work that never get the recognition they deserve, but are always fighting to see a better day. That’s what fuels me and that’s the type of politician I want to be, always rooted in community. The day that I lose sight of that, is the day that I will no longer find joy in my work. And also the day that I’ll no longer be successful in my work.

Also, the first email that I got in my inbox on January 2nd, 2021 was from two 16 year olds. They said that they were inspired by my run for office and wanted to talk to me about some policies they wanted to see pass in North Carolina. I was like, done. You can have all day if you want. That’s what I live for. Incredible. Right?

Kristine: I cry easily and I absolutely would have cried reading that email. Beautiful.

Kristine: How can people get connected to you? How can they support you?

Ricky: If you’re interested in the work we’re doing in educational equity through LatinxEd, email me at ricky@latinxed.org. If it’s politically related or if you’re interested in being a public servant, how to run a campaign or how to run for office, I’m always happy to talk with folks at ricky.hurtado@ncleg.gov