We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jesse Herrera a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jesse, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
CoAct is a non-profit social innovation studio that creates lasting social and economic opportunities to address today’s most pressing challenges.
As a lifelong designer and developer, I recognized a disconnect between the designer and the end user when developing products and built spaces. A relevant example I often recall is a Multi-Family facility I designed early in my career. Thought the project was aimed to serve seniors with mobility and health impairments, we never interfaced with any of the potential tenants to better understand their day-to-day experience, observe how they navigate space, and explore how we could create a space to celebrate their individuality.
As I transitioned to the public and social sector, I observed similar practices. Often, well-intentioned, well-educated champions would be invited to brainstorm novel ideas to address challenges our communities faced. However, many at the table were not from the communities we aimed to serve, nor had lived experience. Typically, the very community members the projects aimed to serve, were not invited.
As a young man, I spent my teenage years as a gang member in Fort Worth, Texas. After a near death experience and a blessing of circumstances, I left the life behind and pursued my education, becoming the first in my family to graduate from college. As a former gang member, I came to understand the impact of social isolation and the value of exploring the intimacy of human challenges. Before we can discover how, we need to understand why.
Building on my professional and lived experience, I recognized design as a creative problem-solving process to better understand the underlining causes of today’s social challenges and build strategic responses to create sustained impact. From this in partnership with 3 fellow community champions recognizing similar trends in their own industries, we formed CoAct as a response to this disconnect, and fill a needed research and development gap in the social arena.
Jesse, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Graduating with an architecture degree, I started my career designing multi-family facilities for senior communities. Responding to the recession, I transitioned to construction, spending a few years building federal and public facilities as a general contractor. With the effects of the recession lingering, I landed in Dallas, working for a HVAC and Plumbing company over seeing work across a wide portfolio of clients including public schools, colleges, hospitals, commercial facilities, and federal buildings. Following this I joined Tarrant County College to help design and develop academic spaces on behalf of the institution. At TCC, I was able to hone my skills as a designer, specifically in creating equity centered practices. Realizing similar trends with the disconnect between the designer and end user, I took the lead on implementing a new project process focused on engaging with the end users of the spaces and inviting them to be a part of the decision-making process for their projects. It did not always mean the end user got everything they wanted, but they had the power to make decisions on the project based on the restrictions often present with most capital projects. This aided in creating a more streamline delivery schedule for projects and improved end user satisfaction.
Building off my work and life experience and in partnership with our other founders, we created CoAct. Through CoAct we provide services to communities, non-profit partners, institutions, and municipalities to aid in developing responses to complex social challenges. We aid our partners in mapping out the problem, identifying who it effects, how it affects them, and how their day-to-day experience contributes to the challenge. From the insights gained, we explore existing and emerging solutions and identify unmet needs. From these unmet needs, we help our partners explore innovative solutions that fill unserved gaps. Once a viable concept is discovered, we take on the creative risk of testing the idea by developing prototypes and pilot programs to identify any shortcomings and see the idea in action. From the insights gained, we develop a strategy to bring successful ideas to self-sufficiency. The aim with each project is to eventually exit, and let the solution take a life of it’s own. The project lessons become insights we share with our partners and communities to aid in creating sustained impact. As applicable, we utilize the lessons learned to address key system barriers such as narrative, policy, or training.
Our work is grounded in the community and the challenges we aim to solve. We strive to not start with an idea, but rather understanding the challenge in its full depth. This aids us in developing practical solutions the communities we serve can easily utilize and replicate.
Our current portfolio of projects includes Grow Southeast, Real Stories, and The Mindful Market.
Grow Southeast, developed in partnership with Commissioner Brooks Office and The Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration, aim to address food disparities by developing community owned and operated urban farms. Long term, we aim to amend local policies and develop training programs to increase accessibility in permitting farms in Fort Worth and addressing the age and race gap for the American urban farmer.
The Mindful Market builds off of Grow Southeast to introduce the first farmer’s market in East Fort Worth in over a generation. Realizing the lack of healthy food options in East Fort Worth, the complete absence any hub for farmers to sell fresh produce, and the lack of cultural representation at local farmer’s markets, we partnered with Texas Wesleyan University and The Office of Commissioner Brooks to build the Mindful Market. It functions as a space to introduce mindful practices and locally grown food that align the diverse communities that call East Fort Worth home.
Real Stories, developed in partnership with fellow student champions, is an art installation aimed at increasing awareness and understanding towards homelessness among college students. Art pieces are inspired by the individual stories of students and the data collected on basic needs insecurities they face. The installation is circulated at college campus to address the lack of awareness discovered at each institution. Often, we hear “oh, it doesn’t happen here, not at this university”. Our aim long term is to build up a network of student peers to help lead the project and advocate for resources and safe spaces where these experiences can be shared without the threat of judgement or retaliation.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I am a lifelong native of Fort Worth, Texas. My mother grew up in Beeville, Texas, and my dad hails from the East Coast. Growing up in rural Texas, my mother experienced racism in its most direct form. As a Latina and Native Spanish Speaker, she was often met with threats when speaking in her native tongue. Even her teachers would execute punishment at the slightest conversation in anything except English.
Given this lived experience, my mother made it a priority to each her children English so we could best complete our education and pursue our dreams. Given this and my dad (step-father but the man who raised me and I love) being a black man from the east coast, led to an increased amount of mockery as I progressed through middle and high school. The irony of this mockery is it came from my own people, for not speaking Spanish. Often referred to “not a real Mexican” this boiled over, eventually leading to me joining a group of individuals experiencing similar. Given my ties to family in Beeville were severed after my grandfather’s passing, this opportunity seemed like the ideal prospect to build a new family, through the friends in this new crew.
Fast forward a year, I am engaged in a number of questionable acts, all in the name of supporting my crew. The term blind loyalty cannot be understated. I rarely questioned a request, often putting myself at risk and sacrificing anypersonal possession needed, including my car at times for the cause. Given the numerous close encounters I had with death and imprisonment, it could be stated a miracle I am in the position I am in. Truth be told, it took betrayal before I considered leaving. By grace, circumstance, or the will of the universe (pick your belief), events lined up where my departure was possible. From there, I enrolled in college the next week, becoming the first in my family to step foot on a campus.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My journey is driven by my curiosity to better understand the underlying issues of today’s most entrenched problems. I have embarked on multiple trips across the globe to explore solutions and problem-solving processes other cities and organizations have utilized to solve complex social challenges. One of the key insights that emerged is my understanding of collective impact. Working on large public projects and intimate social projects, I learned that collective impact is a process, not just an individual act. Rather than create a large multi-collaborative project, I strive to create small strategic projects that increase the capacity of community members to be individual contributors. Through this process, we can create resiliency through the network of solution providers we can activate and incentivize. My goal is to set a foundation for others to build from and push beyond what our organization could imagine. Through this approach, we can detach our organization as a necessity and achieve greater sustained impact through the champions that build off our success.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.coactntx.org
- Instagram: coactntx
- Facebook: coactntx
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseromanherrera/
- Twitter: coactntx
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@coact2297
Image Credits
Photographed by Walt Burns, Blue Zones, and CoAct | Photos property of CoAct