Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melissa Alvarez-zabriskie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi MELISSA, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I began the Tennessee Hispanic Action Network out of a need to advocate for my community. With the challenges we face, such as broken promises by leaders and the ability to be informed about harmful legislation, we tend to trust each other over outsiders. This is a concept I truly understood, and I wanted to give Hispanics a chance at leadership and making meaningful change. I wanted to create something that would be built by Latinos and support Latinos, so I finally made the leap and decided to lay the groundwork needed to springboard the organization into existence.

MELISSA, 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?

I started this work years ago. I left South Florida, a majority Hispanic community, and moved to Lowell, MA. I immediately looked for my first job in Massachusetts when I got there. I found a great job close to home, and the owner and I seemed to hit it off wonderfully in the interview. At the end of the interview, she said she was impressed by me and stated she was most impressed that I didn’t have an accent. She explained that she couldn’t hire anyone with an accent because she needed Spanish speakers to speak to her clients but not be too Spanish sounding which would turn her other clients off. She then offered me the job only upon the exception I provided proof of my citizenship. I needed money, so I took the job regardless of the blows I had just been dealt, regardless of the lack of dignity in how I was treated. When I left Massachusetts for Syracuse, NY, I vowed to work with only Hispanics, and I did. I did incredible meaningful work with an organization dedicated to serving the Latino population in Syracuse and the surrounding 7 counties. I worked in housing, which was my first love, and advocacy. I worked in grant writing, immigration, and community events. I moved into more political arenas in 2014 when I became a captain for the Bernie Sanders campaign. I loved his progressive views at the time, and it was fun to learn how political campaigns work. I later became involved in a group of 7 community leaders that drafted a proposal, which later became a bill that added an additional +$360 million to the state budget to help families afford their heating and electric bills in the winter months. I’ve always been a community girl at heart, and I’m passionate about serving my community. I went to school, then grad school, and became a therapist. I struggled with helping clients when their problems were systemic and could only be solved on the macro level. That’s when I knew I needed to return to doing community work. It’s what I genuinely and sincerely find joy in doing more than anything.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn shame and classism. I felt very ashamed of who I was before and the struggles I experienced growing up. I felt that if people found out how hard of an upbringing I had, I wouldn’t be accepted into a class of people with more resources. I went on to realize I was working for the acceptance of people who didn’t experience the real world as I knew it, and they also lacked understanding and knowledge of how it functioned. I had to unlearn classism. Classism doesn’t consider resiliency and the resiliency of my community and my people was something to be proud of. As time went on, I spent more time with people who claimed to be experts on other people’s lives and other people’s lived experiences and took credit for it. I sat through lectures of White men hocking their books about systemic racism without having ever experienced it and things like that. It felt as if there was a subterranean part of me that was bound by a prison of my own doing because I wasn’t fortunate enough earlier on in life. Then I realized that was classism and it’s total bullshit and it is created to keep people like me from speaking up.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like I said before, I was a mental health therapist. It was fun. I became certified in fun interventions, I helped a lot of people, and I met some absolutely beautiful souls. I don’t regret it because it also shaped me as a person. I am still a therapist. My children can identify a cognitive distortion or a dialectical behavioral therapy skill almost as fast as they can spit out a vegetable, which is pretty fast. I can’t shed that about myself. It’s in my parenting, my communication style with my husband, and how I listen to my friends when they’re trying to process a difficult time. However, although interwoven in my very being was a community-based person. I loved treating depression because the interventions were all action-based, and the community leader in me is so action-oriented. But I needed to see big changes to help my clients and unfortunately, I was exposed to that first, so I knew another way was possible, and I liked that way the best. There was never an interest I was more passionate about than community-based work. I did it for years and rather than lose steam, I felt invigorated every day, even on days I was handed blows and had to go back to the drawing board. I believe in community organizations shaping neighborhoods, which in turn shape cities, and so on. So I left my beautiful office and deck of UNO cards for a protest sign and I went back to familiar territory.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.TnHispanicActionNetwork.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tnhispanicactionnetwork
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-alvarez-zabriskie-3a83371a1/