In our fourth episode, Lisa Prior, President of The Boston Club, is joined by Betty Francisco, CEO of Boston Impact Initiative.
Together they discuss:
Tune in then subscribe to the show and follow Betty Francisco, Boston Impact Initiative, and The Boston Club on LinkedIn.
In our fourth episode, Lisa Prior, President of The Boston Club, is joined by Betty Francisco, CEO of Boston Impact Initiative.
Together they discuss:
Tune in then subscribe to the show and follow Betty Francisco, Boston Impact Initiative, and The Boston Club on LinkedIn.
Welcome to Speaking of Allyship, a podcast of the Boston Club, New England's premier women's leadership organization. I'm your host, Lisa Pryor, President. Here we bring you personal stories and proven leadership practices for allyship, including what it means, how to be an ally, and how to receive or ask for allyship too. Leadership is expansive in the workplace, across gender, race, orientation, identity, or how about just thinking differently? This podcast brings you together with amazing business and thought leaders of greater Boston, Massachusetts and New England to hear their personal stories and journeys and how their experiences and lessons learned shaped their leadership approach. You'll take away insights and tips, learn how allyship and mentorship can play a role in your career and how you can pay it forward, and leadership practices on everything from how to create inclusive work environments to how to be brave and prepared for challenging conversations. Let's get started. Welcome back to Speaking of Allyship, a podcast of the Boston Club. I'm Lisa Pryor, president, and I'm thrilled to be here this morning with Betty Francisco, who is currently the CEO of the Boston Impact Initiative and co-founder of Amplify Latinx and a longtime community leader in greater Boston and beyond. Betty, welcome. We are so thrilled to have you here this morning. Thanks so much, Lisa. It's great to be with you. And thank you so much for being here, even as we wait this upcoming storm. Betty, we'd love to just start a little bit by hearing about your own leadership journey. What brought you to this role today in your own journey of leadership? Great question. So I started my career actually as a corporate lawyer here in Boston, but never did I think that I would end up being a lawyer. I grew up in New York City to a mixed ethnicity family. So my mom is Puerto Rican and my father's Chinese. I grew up both in New York and in Puerto Rico, mostly raised by my mom as a single parent. So I learned the language, I learned Spanish, I grew up sort of in my PR culture, and very much identify as Latina. And I think part of watching my mom raise me and my brother as a single mother in a really, really difficult environment, not with much money or resources, is what started to shape my view of how we can show up in the world. She often navigated situations where there was lack of resources. I grew up in public housing. And so, you know, this question that you raised about allyship reminded me of the many, many people along the way in my journey, in my career, in my life that. Really helped us and helped me to think about what could be possible. So even becoming a lawyer, right, was not something that I saw in my family. There were no role models around that, but it was in college that a professor of mine. Started to talk about the role of law and how, you know, law plays into our policies, our entire justice system and how there's various ways, right, that we could play a role in that to actually change our own conditions. And so my initial interest in law was to be an immigration lawyer and to drive policy change in that context. And then I went to business school and law school here in Boston and decided that I actually wanted to do more along the lines of business and drive change that way. So my journey has been one where I practiced law for 22 years and then about seven years ago came into a need for wanting to change what I was doing. I felt like I had reached the top of what I could contribute as a lawyer and decided to start working with small businesses in order to support their starting growth and then also investing. So I became an angel investor and that's what got me into this whole startup world, startup ecosystem, and eventually propelled me into my role now at Boston Impact Initiative. And so I've taken lots of turns along the way as a lawyer, as now a fund. Manager in an impact investment fund that is doing work around economic and racial justice. But I've also been a convener of other constituencies, including the Latino community. So lots of twists and turns in my leadership journey, but what I will say, it all connects into social, racial, economic justice. Thank you so much. And what I appreciate so much in hearing your journey, as you just said, are not only the twists and turns, but it sounds like you had a very strong compass guiding you. The world today isn't sort of pre-made career paths for us. We have a sort of guiding compass. I'm fascinated your story of growing up and the experience of being in a sort of multiracial community but being raised by a single mom. And you said that informs how we show up later as leader. And how would you describe what that has done for you? We can hear the choices you've made, but tell us a little more about that compass and its connection to those earlier experiences. So my mom was one that despite having little, she had a mindset of abundance because she was always helping others, right? So one thing about my mom too is that she grew up with a lot of, mental health issues, right? She had a lot of anxiety and depression, which impacted her entire life. You know, I sort of grew up in and out of going to psychiatrists and psychologists because of her life. And it taught me this just idea of being super resilient, right, of always fighting and challenging because. You know, she was sort of in this world that put her in a box. And it was really difficult for her to do and pursue other things because of the stigma, right? Of having mental health issues. So that's one, I think it's the watching the need for being resilient, gritty, you know, having very little resources to just how you manage, right? Life with a very limited budget and two children. And so those formative years of just watching how she navigated really does reflect in the way I do things today, right? And then she was also very focused on education, the role of education, but not just education to create a pathway for us, it was a pathway out of poverty. But also a constant learning, the role of learning in your life of always pivoting to something new and how that learning helps you connect to people in a different way. So despite all the challenges my mother had, she was an incredible artist. She was a poet. She wrote beautiful poetry. She was a beautiful craft maker. She made things out of seashells. She made these incredible, like a whole orchestra made of frogs made out of seashells that ended up in the Museum of Puerto Rican Culture in New York. It was incredible. I love those little frogs. I don't know if you've ever seen them when you go to different Caribbean islands, but people make these crafts. She had drawers and drawers of seashells, which I hated when I was a kid, but now I so appreciate because she could make something out of nothing. When you watch that as a child, it starts to, unconsciously, I think create these skill sets in you of watching someone build things out of, virtually, you know, limited resources. So you start to apply that to other things in your life, and even in academics, right. And then in career, it it sort of made me the type of leader that, you know, you could, I could be given a project with very little guidance, and I would figure it out, you would make something out of nothing. Right. And so that, you know, it wasn't great. I mean, that is not how we want to train leaders today, right. But it, but it does help to have seen some of those experiences early and have created a path for myself of, okay, when I don't understand something, I go and learn it. I go, you know, talk to other people to figure it out. And it makes you talk to a lot of different people. So the diversity, you know, what we now call diversity of skills, experiences, and mindsets and ideas is just something that I naturally did because I had to, like, I had to figure out who do I ask, right? To get this done. So very informal training, which now we can formalize, right? What a rich life training. And I think there are so many qualities that you observed and wanted to emulate in your mother's journey that you brought into your own, this idea of abundance. I think especially we are in a very chaotic world today with many, many changes happening at just about every level of the globe and around the world. And it can be easy to have a mindset of scarcity. So, you know, having this idea that actually there is enough for all of us to share the grit and resilience, first of all, to know what's important to you and those values of continuous learning and including others in those diverse viewpoints and then the resilience and grit to make something out of nothing. I think that you've just shared with us a really wonderful illustration. And thank you for sharing your mother's story with us. It's actually very inspiring. Thank you. Thank you. And as you had mentioned, our podcast is about allyship. And as a community of executive and business and thought leaders, women, we're exploring what is this idea of allyship and our conversation will be going on for quite a while. So, curious to hear as you reflect on allyship, what does it mean to you? How would you define it? Well, when you first asked me about this question, I thought, oh, well, you know, isn't isn't this the traditional, you know, definition of, you know, people in power helping those that have less or or who are marginalized. But then I started to think about, you know, what has allyship meant for me? And it's been a confluence of different definitions and, I would say different experiences. So one is allyship has been reflected when others have helped me build my own voice and power. And it doesn't necessarily mean someone gave up their power, but rather helped me build it. And that's shown up in a couple ways. So you know, in my career, I've had amazing managers that have trained me and push me into what we call the stretch roles, right? The ones that you often don't believe you can take on yourself and given me the right tools to be successful in those roles. So that is one is someone else pushing you to build up your own power and your leadership. As a young attorney, for example, there was one partner in particular that that I would say these are little actions, right? That matter a lot. When I was first starting my legal career, you know, you're as a young associate, you really don't know a lot. You're watching, you're learning. That's just the reality. But the one thing this partner did was he always put me at the forefront with a client. And what did that mean? It meant that on every call with a client, I was there, I was actually invited on the call. And even, though I didn't always understand everything in a transaction, he would then tell the client, your point person for this deal or for this task is going to be Betty. And it started to help me build a relationship with the client. Right. And then, so for the work, it was helping me be seen as the go-to person. And then socially, you know, the partner always ensured that I was invited to to outings, events, other meetings, you know, with clients so that I always had visibility too. And that's often not what great managers do, right? Sometimes they hoard those relationships. They don't, you know, want to bring you to the forefront in terms of visibility. So creating visibility is also about building that power. And I look back at that experience because not. Very many people are willing to do that, right? To put put you a young associate first. Um, and, and that is that helped me step up. But it also, you know, was just a great example of, of someone saying, you know, I believe in you. And I want to help you advance very quickly. The other is, you know, in the last couple of years, since 2020, since COVID in particular, this has shown up for me in a really profound way is just how we support other communities, right? So I am, in addition to my current role as CEO of Boston Impact Initiative, which is an impact investing fund, I also co-founded a group in 2012 called the Latina Circle. And that's a group of Latinas that came together, initially mostly lawyers, but then all Latina professionals across different career stages to do what we call build ourselves into positions of power and influence. And that experience was about championing each other, right, championing Latinas to advance in their careers and create a network of championing and support. But we also had to do it across other races and ethnicities. So Latinos are such a diverse culture that we have black Latinas, white Latinas, Asian Latinas like me. And so it was also understanding the challenges of other racial groups to be able to be in solidarity with each other. And so. Fast forward, that group became Amplify Latinx, which is focused on building economic and political power for the Latino community in Massachusetts. And one of the things that we started to do, especially after the pandemic, was advocate for policy change together with the Black community. So the Latino community, the Black community coming together to push for more resources for small businesses or changes, you know, in the way our municipalities are doing procurement. So those are also ways that we can be allies with other communities and other groups. So it's not just, you know, often it's seen as like white folks helping, you know, marginalized communities. Well, that's a very limiting view of allyship. I appreciate that so, so very much. just like you, there's so many dimensions to what you've just shared in terms of your experience of allyship. Your first example was maybe the more common one that we tend to think of, and especially in organizations, and especially when there's a natural imbalance of power. You described a hierarchy, right? A manager who, I loved your phrase, little actions that matter, right? It was not grandstanding or grandiose gestures, but it was the small things this person did consistently it sounds like that enabled you and showcased you to, as you said, find your voice and your presence. This other example is allyship across colleagues where you're seeking commonality with people who may seem different and trying to honor and respect and understand those differences at the same time working together for some common vision or purpose. Yes. And it's uplifting each other's voices, right? Voices and shared goals. Sometimes groups are pitted against each other and polarized, but in fact, we have a lot more in common, right? And we have very often shared goals around change that if we come together, we actually are much more successful in driving. I've witnessed that firsthand and feel how powerful those connections can be, and they come from coalition building, right? They come from working together across multiple groups. And then the last thing I'll say about allyship is, personally, I'm also experiencing it as far as helping me continue to pursue my other career goals, which are, I have a goal to get onto a corporate board. And so I'm part of, I've been part of the Boston club and also part of a group called the Boston Women Leaders Network, which is women that have been on corporate boards that now want to help women of color to get onto, onto corporate boards. And so it takes sometimes, and especially for boards, the championing or recommendation of somebody to help you get there. And so that is, you know, not just preparation, uh, for myself, but having the recommendation of someone else is often a critical part of. Getting into certain positions. And so I would say, you know, allyship also shows up that way. It's through championing and putting your political capital right out to play, um, in order to move others forward. So multi dimensions, their little actions that matter, uh, reaching out, raising and amplifying each other's voices and in coalitions and at an individual level, being willing to put our, our political capital, our reputation at at stake for to enable and advance someone else. Such a really well-rounded view of allyship, Betty. Thank you for that. And your experience in leading Amplify Latinx, what would you share? What could you share about what, if anything, is unique in the leadership journey for a Latinx woman? So, well, I would say, you know, Latina is now, or Latinos are, uh, we, we all appreciate the statistics, right. That it's the fastest growing demographic in the United States. You know, we're represent close to 20% now and we'll be about a third of the country by 2050. And, and it's the women, it's the Latinas, right. That often drive, uh, decision-making, are, you know, advancing, uh, both in careers, but also in educational journeys. And one of the things that's still in, you know, a barrier is things like the wage gap, right? Latinas are, uh, make about 53 cents on the dollar compared to white men. They're still, you know, some educational attainment gap and a statistic that's more played up today is the home ownership gap, right? So we're finding that it's Latinos that are buying Thank you for having me. Homes at the fastest rate in the US currently. And yet there's still challenges around access to capital access to credit. And. You also see this in terms of Latina starting businesses, the most recent American Express report on women starting businesses shows that about, you know, six to seven out of 10 new businesses started in the US are started by women and mainly by Latinas. So it's this demographic, right, that is fueling, literally fueling and driving economic growth in the United States. And yet not a lot is being done to help support, this community. So part of, you know, Amplify Latinx and even the Latina circle is about amplifying the voices of the Latino community to showcase the assets that are being brought by this amazing community and what it's doing to help drive our economic growth, but also our culture, our communities, our, it's the workforce of the, of today and of the future. And by showcasing, you know, and challenging those negative stereotypes that we often see in media and in our politics, it's really important, right? That we see the value that this community is bringing and then start to help, um, more women advance professionally, um, whether it's in business or in our, in our corporate community or nonprofit community, I see so many Latinas going into leadership roles and that not being supported. And so, you know, amplify has been about amplifying voices, creating more visibility for Latinos, but also around increasing representation, right. Across all sectors, especially in roles of influence and decision-making that could be politics, but it's, it's across the board. And so allyship, you know, to me, to bring it back to that, um, has, has been when other groups, other, you know, uh, executives or, or political leaders even have said, we're going to make this a priority in terms of supporting the Latin X community, which again, is very diverse. It crosses into many other ethnicities and races to bring more resources and support so that this community can start to advance economically. And in the end, we all share prosperity that way. And there's so much in what you just said. At the Boston Club, we talk about our key drivers being we convene the conversations that matter. Like this one, you're illuminating for us the different facets of the Latinx experience that build relationships that matter. And it's really those relationships. And again, I really loved the little actions that matter are what really build relationships. And that's what advances us to the tables that matter, where decisions are made or where voice or perspective. Needs to be present. And this seems like a great moment. It's so clear, your compass is so strong. Your clarity about what's important. And it seems like that is all what led you to becoming the CEO of the Boston Impact Initiative. And you're currently launching a second impact fund. So tell us why you love this work so much And tell us a little bit, please, about what the work is. Sure, so I came to BII about two years ago now as CEO. Before that, I had been serving on the investment committee of this fund. So it's a pretty unique place. So it's a nonprofit that started as an impact investment fund focused on investing in entrepreneurs of color or entrepreneurs supporting communities of color with the broader mission of closing the racial wealth divide. So it's unique in that it's an impact fund. The pilot fund started in 2013, and it was approving a thesis that you could do place-based investing, so focusing on a particular geography. In this case, it was greater Boston. And investing integrated capital, which is blended. Capital, equity, debt, and grants, and all of the transaction types within those three buckets. So in debt, it's everything from loans, lines of credit, receivables, royalty, finance, to equity investments that, you know, do take a piece of a company, but doing that kind of investing in a way that preserves the long term equity rights for entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs of color, because we ultimately want to help them build their ownership and especially benefit the founders and the workers that create value in a business. So sort of back in 2013, when this pilot fund was launched, it was one of the first in the country that was structured as a nonprofit debt fund, investing integrated capital in a place and had to focus on racial and economic justice. So lots of impact funds, right, but not many that were focused on changing the conditions that often create the inequality and racial wealth gap, right, that we have here in Massachusetts, it's so entrenched. So some of the things that we do differently is trust based investing. So we don't use credit scores or take personal guarantees, we try to not do the things that traditional capital or traditional banks do. And then we're focused on entrepreneurs that often are overlooked, right, that other sources of capital do not fund, because we don't look at risk and return the same way, right? So So there's a... They're no more risky than any other entrepreneur. And we're also as a nonprofit impact fund able to adjust the returns that we seek. So for us, impact is most important. And financial return, is balanced in terms of what we're seeking. So from an impact perspective, we're looking for. Social, as well as ecological impact. So we want our businesses, especially businesses of color, to retain as much ownership as they can, we encourage them to pay livable wages, we want to support them to create good jobs in their community, and to mitigate their environmental impact and hopefully build towards creating a more climate resilient future. So our second fund that was just launched was in October. And what I will say is, this has been a love journey for me, because I've, you know, as I mentioned, I started my career as a business lawyer. And often was serving other people, right impact, not even impact on venture capital, investors, startups, raising a lot of money, and I was the deal lawyer, right, documenting all these things. And I will tell you that in my early career, I never saw investors that look like me. I actually never even saw startups that had women founders, right. And so it this journey has been one of how How do we get more women and people of color to be in these positions now where we're not just holding decision-making power, but now we're holding power over money? And who gets that money? Who gets to allocate it? Who gets to even own our businesses? So it's been a real. Eye opener for me of, you know, what does power really mean? Like we've, we've talked about political power. We've talked about leadership and, and having positions of, of influence. But really real power is about money and who gets to move it and allocate it. And so that's partly where I wanted to move my career, right. To now support a fund that is challenging traditional systems, traditional ways of moving money. And it's trying to train other people, other investors around the country to move money very differently so that it does support more entrepreneurs of color or, you know, under invested in founders. So that that's been a real change for me. And but it's also I'm learning, I continue to learn. I'm what we call an emerging fund manager. I'm a woman of color, but also new in this role. And this is our second fund. So it's a one that I feel like I'll continue to be learning in this in this whole journey, but one where I think that I'm now in a role where I can influence and be a role model for other Latinas, other women, other people of color to also seek to be an impact investing. And that has been a theme in our journey here, in our allyship conversations, the importance of having someone who looks like me. This is what our podcast guests have said in these roles of power, in these roles of influence and role modeling. And you're certainly role modeling and bringing that kind of leadership. Betty, you're known and we can hear you're a powerful convener, you're a powerful change maker, as you look back on the journey so far, even though I hear you're still continuing to learn, what is some of the change or influence that you've had that you feel most proud of? I would say that it helped to build an incredible network, which is Amplify Latinx, right? It started as a group of 60 women in 2012, and by 2012, it was a group of 60 women. 2016 when we launched amplify was 1000 and now it's a network of about 6000. Wow. So the convening power of a group that everybody wants, uh, to connect with, right? So I would say across the board, corporations, government, other nonprofits are constantly coming right to, to connect with the women and men now in this group, but also to learn from. It. And so that's the ability to convene and create a network of deep connections is powerful in and of itself. And, but I built it with my co-founder, Anita Roman, in a really genuine way. It was really to create a network of relationships that, could support each other. And then that's evolved, right, into doing advocacy that helps create more resources and. Visibility for the Latino community. So that that's one thing that I'm super proud of, in terms of what we created. The other is I started more as a technical assistance for small businesses during COVID. So I was one of those people, you know, again, in my in my lots of spare time was trying to help Latino owned businesses that were struggling just to survive to get access to loans or grants or those PPP, you know, Paycheck Protection and program. And that connected me to this amazing community of. Business resources, the CDC, CDFI community. So this is the nonprofit lenders that started to come together in 2020 to help businesses of color in particular, survive the, pandemic in those early days. That network, or that group, I should say, has become a coalition. And it's called the Coalition for an Equitable Economy. And that coalition is an advocate for more resources for our. Small business community, particularly entrepreneurs of color or those that are lack resources. And the ultimate goal is to create a more inclusive and sustainable and equitable economy. But coming together that way to advocate for grant funding, more allocation of resources in a more equitable way, right? So that, um, these programs actually reach our smallest businesses, the micro businesses, but also businesses of color and immigrant owned businesses, and, also advocating for change along the lines of, you know, increasing procurement practices, both at the government level with municipalities, but also in corporations, and really challenging right practices that create systemic barriers. That has been also just this a wonderful journey of different leaders coming together to to advocate for change. And the coalition is still going strong. We're, I would say, partly responsible for the state of Massachusetts launching one of the largest COVID relief grant programs in the country. We gave away almost $700 million to small businesses in the state, and half of that went to women and entrepreneurs of color. And that was because of the advocacy of. This group. So it just it shows the power of different constituencies coming together around a shared goal. And illustrates your own sort of definition of allyship having so many facets from those little acts of working with small business owners to convening these large coalitions that amplify each other's voices. Thank you for sharing all that. Betty Francisco, what's one idea for the future, something that seems out of reach today, but that you would love to see happen in the future? So one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is this idea of what is community ownership? Community ownership of land, community ownership of resources, and something that we're investing in at Boston Impact Initiative is community owned and controlled real estate. And one of the things I'm pretty fascinated by right now, and it's a challenge, is the. Could there ever be community owned offshore wind? Could there be there's community owned solar, right? So this is this, when you think about the transition to net zero, the clean energy transition, there's real risk that it does not benefit those that are most at risk, right? Our communities of color, our environmental justice communities. And so here's the crazy idea, right? Could we have our clean energy assets owned by all of us owned by the community that it serves? It seems out of reach, it seems like that will never happen. But that's my challenge for everybody. How do we create community ownership of one of the biggest energy transitions that is going to occur right here in our state? That's very visionary, Betty. Betty Francisco, CEO of Boston Impact Initiative and founder of Amplify Latinx, how can people get involved and how can they stay in touch with you? Check out our website, bostonimpact.org for more information about BII and our new fund. And then you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn, Betty Francisco. Abundance, resilience, grit, continuous learning, making something amazing out of nothing. Betty Francisco, it's been an honor to hear your journey this morning and your thoughts on allyship, and we thank you for being with us. Thanks so much, Lisa. It was great to be here. Thanks for listening to Speaking of Allyship, a podcast of the Boston Club, New England's premier women's leadership organization. You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes at www.thebostonclub.com. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. This is your host, Lisa Pryor, President. Be well and ask yourself, What's one thing I could do today to be an ally?