Profiles in leadership: The right place at last

Myra Martinez vividly remembers the day her father came home, grinning from ear to ear. He had a surprise, he told his family, shepherding them to the yellow station wagon. The surprise for the family of five, who had been living with Martinez's grandmother and uncle, was a home of their own.

 

Martinez, who serves as deputy executive director of Affordable Homes of South Texas, wanted other families to experience the happiness she had that day. But she took a winding path to the field of housing and community development. "I didn't realize this was my calling until I got it," she shares.

 

Martinez first left her hometown of Harlingen, Texas, after graduating from college. Her career focus then was fashion and her goal was to work as a buyer for a national department store. When she got that job in Dallas, she found a different world from the one she'd known. At home, she'd been insulated from prejudice and racism. But at her new job, she experienced some cruelty from coworkers who told her she was only there because they had a minority quota to fill. She endured slight after slight.

 

Her parents had experienced worse on trips north to work in the fields as a day laborer, she says. "That always stuck in my mind." Martinez's father came to the U.S. at age 12 and began working in the fields. Her mother, born in the U.S., left school in ninth grade to work to support her family. "Any time I was discouraged, I would think to myself: I can't stop because it would be a disservice to them," Martinez says. "My mom is my hero because she sacrificed her own dreams and ambitions to raise her kids. My dad is my hero because of his desire to have a better life for his family. He was not dissuaded by people wanting to stop him because he wasn't born in the United States."

 

As an eighth grader, she remembers quizzing him as he studied for his citizenship exam. A photo from the day he received that citizenship still hangs on the wall of her family home. The fencing business he started in 1979 is still running today with her brother at the helm. "If my parents didn't stop, there's no excuse for me to stop," Martinez says. That became especially true when she saw bigotry up close. It didn't alter her ambition, she says. "It enhanced it." But the experience shifted her career path. Martinez began working in the nonprofit world, at a food bank, a charter school, and then as a leader for another housing organization, where she came in contact with Robert Calvillo, executive director of Affordable Homes of South Texas.

 

The two organizations worked together – closely and well, Calvillo says. But Martinez's organization was going through changes and became an imperfect fit. Calvillo knew where the fit might be just right: His own organization. "I told her back then, it's like a football coach, and you have to find the right organization with the right organizational philosophy. You have to find the right environment."

 

For both of them, that environment was Affordable Homes of South Texas. Martinez has been there nearly 10 years, Calvillo 25. "I'm a numbers guy; a recovering banker," says Calvillo. "She brings the other skills we need in the organization. Marketing and human resources. People open up to her." She also knows how to analyze a process and improve it, he says. "She gets the job done."

 

"From Day One, I felt different working at this nonprofit," Martinez says. "I couldn't articulate it at the time, but I knew I was more passionate. I wanted to learn everything I could about affordable housing. At the end of every day, I felt like I was bettering someone's situation."

 

While Martinez felt she was finally in the right place, she didn't realize the true connection until she went through the NeighborWorks Achieving Excellence Program, a collaboration with Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. While the program helps leaders focus on the next level of their organization, it also allows them to explore their own trajectory. That's when Martinez's mind returned to the day in the yellow station wagon, to the importance of home.

 

Martinez's client base is largely Latinx. But the region is becoming more diverse demographically.  "We welcome that," she says. She sees, as she always has, the importance of equity and possibility. "As far ahead as we are ahead in America, we're still behind." Her goal is to get ahead, home by home.

 

Her mind travels to a single mother of three who never thought she'd own a home. But she took a leap of faith, worked with a prepurchase counselor, and become budget-ready and mortgage-ready. "She was so excited," Martinez recalls. "They were going to move in the week of Christmas and she was going to pick up the kids from school and drive them to their new house." Just as it was with Martinez's childhood home this would be a surprise.

 

Martinez and the staff planned a surprise of their own, donating and decorating a tree that was waiting when the new homeowner arrived. "Everyone was crying," Martinez says. "That was the first closing I was a part of." There have been more since. Over the last 45 years, the organization has helped over 4,500 families purchase or repair their home. Sometimes, people forget how much owning a home can mean to a family. But Martinez remembers. "It's still the American dream," she says. "It really is." And it's a dream Martinez wants to remain a part of for years to come.