Being involved in the community has been a priority for me over the last two decades of living in Atlanta. My family and I are fortunate to enjoy good health and to be in a stable financial situation, but it is not lost on me that this is not the case for everyone. And it has not even always been the case for my own family. My parents came to the US from Bolivia in the 1950s and went through a lot of struggles to find economic stability in a country that was foreign to them and in a language that wasn’t their own. So being able to help someone else in their journey toward self-sufficiency is a gift.
I am proud to work with a firm who values community involvement in the same way I do. BlackRock, a key player in the asset management industry, opened its Atlanta office in early 2019. From the start, the firm looked at the Atlanta market not just for the opportunities it brought to the firm, but also for the ways in which the firm could positively impact the local community. And that is one of the main reasons why I was happy to join the growing Atlanta office over three years ago.
Since then, I have worked to bring greater connection between BlackRock and the mission of New American Pathways, which is so complementary of BlackRock’s purpose to help more and more people achieve financial well-being. As a past member of New AP’s Board of Directors and a current member of its Advisory Council, this connection between the two entities is important to me. For the past three years, New AP has been a gift recipient through our annual grant giving process. This year, BlackRock’s Social Impact team presented New AP with a $25,000 Gives grant to support the Civic Pathways program, which focuses on developing new Americans into community leaders. I am proud to see BlackRock actively impacting the lives of new Americans in this way and empowering the immigrant and refugee communities to be civically active.