I Belong
How Shame Can Lead to a Sense of Belonging
Miss Massachusetts 2021, Elizabeth Pierre, SSW ’24, shared her story about how shame in cultural identity, race, and age eventually led to her sense of belonging. Pierre began her story by talking about her Haitian heritage. As a first-generation American, she described the otherness she felt trying to fit in. Her Haitian heritage shaped her upbringing, yet when she went outside her parents’ house, life was the American culture, and this dual cultural identity made her feel different from her classmates and peers. In 8th grade, Pierre turned to dance to fuel her creative outlet, which her Haitian parents, whose focus was on education, found a frivolous activity. They eventually acquiesced, but Pierre said she immediately felt like an outsider again because she was the only Black girl in her class and the one with the least experience. Because of that, she felt she needed to be perfect and be the person who defied the negative stereotype of a young Black girl. Pierre was later awarded a scholarship for being the best performer in the class, though even with that honor she felt unworthy. However, after some reassurance from her teacher, she eventually accepted that maybe she was worthy.
Pierre also identified how being shamed for her age presented another seed of unworthiness. In high school, she became an activist after Trayvon Martin’s death and, with her peers, staged a school walkout to protest his unjust killing at the State House. However, they were met with disdain by elders who criticized their actions and impact due to their age. Unfortunately, this again fueled that seed of doubt about where she belonged and led to her questioning whether or not she had a voice.
Pierre went on to graduate with her bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University. After graduation, she decided to pursue a new interest that would once again challenge her comfort zone. She learned about the Miss America scholarship and the opportunity to make a difference in her community, and decided to embark on that journey. However, when she arrived for the interview for the Miss Cambridge competition, she was immediately crippled with the long-ago fear and feeling of unworthiness. Once again, she was the only Black girl in the room and the one with the least experience. However, she aced the interview and went on to win the Miss Cambridge title. She used her platform to go back into schools to talk to students and encourage them in their journeys of belonging. In this conversation at BC, she urged students to know who they are and not let vulnerability and shame stop them from doing what they want or need to do.
Pierre went on to win the Miss Massachusetts competition and placed third in the Miss America competition last December. She ended the conversation by admitting that while thoughts of imposter syndrome still emerge from time to time, every win assured her that people believed in her and wanted her to be there. People loved her because of her difference, and that is something that she is finally becoming comfortable with.
How Empowering People Leads to Belonging
John Barros, managing principal at Cushman & Wakefield, spoke about how his affiliation with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) shaped his journey of belonging. DSNI’s mission is to empower its residents to organize, plan, create, and control a vibrant, diverse, and high-quality neighborhood in collaboration with community partners. Barros explained how each of these actions impacted him from age 14 when he joined a neighborhood cleanup that DSNI sponsored to his current work at Cushman & Wakefield, where he is responsible for bringing more people of color to the landscape of commercial real estate to hopefully lessen the wealth gap in the Boston area.
Born to Cape Verdean parents in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Barros felt his community did not belong to him, nor did he belong in the community. He said isolation is very high in poor, high-crime neighborhoods where parents keep their children indoors to keep them safe. Involvement with DSNI was an opportunity for youth to have a voice and change the image of young people as gangbangers and drug dealers. In his younger years, Barros helped to organize initiatives like the painting of the mural on the F and T Supermarket, which depicts images of the neighborhood’s diverse youth and their contributions. While a student at Dartmouth College, he said he drew from DSNI’s intentional planning for what the neighborhood should look like to help him model conversations with Dartmouth’s president about what was needed there. After feeling like he didn’t belong at the university during his first two years, Barros was able to get Dartmouth to develop an African American Studies major, and he was the first graduate from the program.
Early in his career, Barros served as DSNI’s executive director for over 10 years. In that time, he helped to create initiatives designed to strengthen and build ties within the community; for example, the creation of three neighborhood charter schools. As an entrepreneur, he and his brothers opened a restaurant in a predominantly Cape Verdean neighborhood in Boston’s Dorchester area to help build pride and share their culture with the rest of the community, thereby allowing Cape Verdeans to feel like they were part of it.
Barros said control and decision-making of municipal governance are critical to every aspect of community advancement. As the city’s first chief of economic development under the Marty Walsh administration, he was instrumental in creating initiatives that would make the city more equitable and inclusive, and co-chaired the Imagine Boston 2030 campaign, created to transform the city.
Barros wrapped up his remarks by sharing his most recent story of belonging. He said when he was invited to be part of Cushman & Wakefield, he didn’t think it was a space for him because Black people are generally not in those spaces. However, he changed his mind and saw it as an opportunity to change that. He said we internalize stereotypes of ourselves that become our own insecurities, and we need to be open to opportunities and be change leaders. When asked by a student about what he has done personally to bring different voices to the table, he referenced his role on the DSNI board, where he has been intentional about providing board seats to different groups, including women, youth, the LGBTQ community, and even whites, who are a small minority in the neighborhood.
I Was Not Supposed to Be Here
Juan Lopera ’99, the inaugural chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH), shared his story of guardian angels and how he is creating systemic guardian angels in his work today. Lopera began by telling the story of his father, who came to America from Colombia to provide a better life for his family. Leaving the streets of Pablo Escobar to live in crowded quarters in Boston, where people are predisposed to chronic conditions, Lopera and his family experienced and saw firsthand the health care disparities in Brown and Black communities. And these experiences, Lopera said, grounded him in today’s reality given the recent George Floyd and COVID-19 tragedies.
His arrival in America at age 13 gave Lopera the status of an undocumented immigrant. He performed well in school and had the grades to be accepted at several area colleges with offers of generous financial aid packages. However, his immigration status prevented college enrollment. Boston College allowed him to enroll after a one-week extension to get his political asylum papers in place. Lopera called this his own “Miracle on the Heights.” Boston College fed Lopera’s faith, and in his junior year with the Ignacio Volunteers, he went to the Dominican Republic. However, he was detained at immigration upon his return to the United States, and his experience with the immigration officer was distressing. Still, he remained respectful to the officer, and once his residency was established, he was allowed to board a flight back to Boston. Unfortunately, this incident created another setback, with BC realizing that there was an error in his admission and that his status actually did not allow enrollment. However, in reviewing his new immigration documents, BC found that the immigration officer in Miami had stamped his passport with an advance parole stamp, which was acceptable to continue enrollment. To Lopera, this was another miracle.
Years later, Lopera met the admissions officer, who admitted that he had turned a blind eye to his immigration status. The admissions officer and the immigration officer, Lopera said, were his guardian angels. He said he was not supposed to be here to tell us his story, but these angels made it possible. Since then, Lopera has made it his mission to provide opportunities for people in need, particularly people of color and the poor. This mission drives the work he does. Lopera argues that businesses have a moral and business imperative to make diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging an integral part of their business plan, and every day that he goes to work, it is to an organization that does. BILH supports all communities like the one Lopera lived in as a child. As their chief of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Lopera has a big voice at the table and is undoubtedly paying it forward as a guardian angel to many.