Mission Wealth’s INSPIREDtalk with Dr. Victor Rios: Making an Impact

[Music] Welcome to our inspired talk make an impact in your community or the World At Large hi I’m Seth Streeter founder and chief impact officer for Mission wealth and today we want to empower each of you to think about your impact and how you can make the difference I’m truly honored to introduce my friend Dr Victor Rios who’s a powerful example of living a life of impact Dr Rios grew up in Oakland California in a single parent household in poverty and on welfare he joined a gang at the age of 13. he was a three-time felon by age 15. and he dropped out of high school at age 16. having witnessed the murder of his very best friend by a rival gang Victor hit a critical juncture in his life when he made the decision to transform but he couldn’t do it alone with the support of a mentor and educators Victor redirected his attitude towards life and he returned to school and eventually went on to earn his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley today Dr Rios is a professor and Associate Dean at University of California Santa Barbara and he’s the author of multiple books with two more

books coming there was an award-winning documentary called the push outs that shows footage of his life over a 20-year period And I highly recommend you watch this moving documentary in 2015 Dr Rios gave a TED Talk called help for the kids the education system ignores and today this talk has over 1.6 million views Dr Rios is an expert on educational reform and he’s one of the nation’s most in-demand speakers on this subject this year alone Dr Rios has spoken to over 100 000 teachers administrators students and their families and his message is to see at-risk students as at promise with resilience character and Grit today we’re going to be recording this session and we’ll be sending all registrants a copy of the link so you can watch it later and share it with your friends I wanted you to know that we have a q a box at the bottom of the screen I’m sure there’ll be a lot of wonderful questions from our community so please post those questions in the Q a box q a box we also have a chat box if you have any comments you’d like to make or you need technical assistance you can post those comments

there and I wanted to remind everyone that at the close of this session within two days we’ll be sending you a top takeaways blog including the video link I am truly grateful Dr Rios that you’re here to share your story with us today thank you so much for being with us thank you thank you so much Seth um very very honored to be here hello good morning everyone uh thank you for coming by and listening to a little bit of of my message um I want to talk about a dignifying purpose because that’s if you ask me hey Victor what’s your purpose like what do you do in life I would tell you you know for me it’s about finding a dignifying purpose for all uh folks that I encounter all people I encounter so that dignifying purpose what I mean by that is that many times you know uh some some people you know grow up the way I did I’ll talk a little bit about that um without dignity right and so for me my whole schema my whole life mission is to help people that are growing up without dignity um to find that dignity to recover that dignity and and so many times in my own research with young people that are

getting in trouble at school getting in trouble with the police ending up in juvenile facilities I I listen to their stories and I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of stories I’ve followed kids for three years at a time five years at a time I’ve watched them grow up some of them I’ve been able to create mentoring programs for and been able to help them uplift themselves from poverty from adversity violence from abuse and some unfortunately I have not been able to help and watching them go through this process this repetition of of misery that maybe their families have experienced what I’ve learned is that many times in those Journeys there’s a systematic stripping of dignity and then there’s also for those that make it a recovery of dignity so I’ll go back and forth between that process of not having dignity and then recovering that that dignity and how my mission is about finding a dignifying purpose so I’ll tell you a little bit about myself um I was actually born in Mexico hola Los Gerald espanol saludos hello to those of you that speak Spanish um I was born in Mexico and my mom she

struggled I didn’t have a father he he abandoned me before I was even born so my mom you know she she was desperate she gets to the Border tries to get my brother and I across they didn’t want us over here we were poor we were uneducated uh so we ended up in the streets of Tijuana Mexico we were homeless we were hungry my brother was seven I was three sometimes my Mom would find a way to cross into the U.S on her own and make a little bit of money and then cross back but that would take five days ten days and so my seven-year-old brother had to take care of me during this time when my mom was in the U.S and and we were on the streets we barely like she would pay people to let us have a room to stay in or a couch to sleep on but these people were at work they weren’t taking care of us so my brother would and I would be on the streets to the point that sometimes we would end up begging people for money so we could eat and so that was that was crazy times and my mom got desperate she made enough money to to try to get us across some coyotes stole her money so then we didn’t have any money so then

she crossed us to the desert and uh that was that was you know a big risk uh as you know you might know a lot of people lose their lives trying to cross through the desert to get to the United States we were lucky we made it to to this country and uh we get to a beautiful city a land of opportunity uh Oakland California and I don’t know if you know Oakland California’s reputation but it’s not America’s safest city okay so we get to Oakland California and my mom gets a job but her boss tells her hey I’m gonna pay you whatever I want if you tell anyone that I’m paying you less than minimum wage I’m gonna call Immigration so they could send you back to Mexico so my mom was you know very nervous getting exploited you know and not being able to report it so she gets us this little apartment with this little bit of money she was making and this apartment was in a dilapidated neighborhood you know a lot of violence a lot of crime foreign you know one day I was playing on the front of uh our apartment complex I was eight years old around maybe even younger than that and a guy and a grown man came up to me and pulled the gun to

my head and said to me where are you from where are you from and at the time I didn’t know what that meant I was a little kid I was innocent later on I grew up and realized you know when I became a teenager oh okay that means like you know um what gang do you represent return for you from I got lucky in that moment the guy you know got distracted you could just see in his eyes but you couldn’t see his soul that kind of uh person you know he might might have been strung out now that I think of it as an adult and um he pulled the gun away and walks away um and I’m just I just froze I didn’t say anything I couldn’t think of anything to say to this guy but in that moment I realized well I better figure out where I’m from right um then I’m a little bit older about 10 years old and one day I you know get uh I’m able to get my mom she she worked at this restaurant called The Sizzler and it was like a buffet restaurant right so you walk in there and there’s a salad bar and then you know uh her job was to keep the salad bar clean so you know she would make sure you know how people are at the buffet you know they’ll grab the

nacho cheese and they’ll spill it on the salad and eat up that kind of thing so she made sure that like she kept it clean and organized and tidy um so she she worked there and um and so she was always gone but one day um you know she saved enough money to get me a bicycle and so I’m on this new bicycle riding around and this drug addict that lived across the street um he came up to me one day and he said hey Victor let me borrow your bike man and I’m like nah man this is my you know this is my bike my mom just bought it for me he’s like hey man look I’ll be right back man I’m just going to the liquor store right there man and I’m like nah man I I I can’t let you borrow my bike you know I I it might get lost or stolen he’s like hey bro I got you don’t you worry give me the bike I’ll be right back and he coerced me right he’s a grown man so he takes my bike he gets on my bike and I’m watching him ride down the street past the liquor store in my bicycle disappears into a tiny Dot into the horizon and I start crying and I’m running around the neighborhood looking for for someone to help me so I run and you know

in poor neighborhoods as some of you might know there’s a liquor store every other block right so it’s ironic right so how some poor poor communities you know we get a lot of liquor stores right but now I live in a middle class community and we get a lot of Whole Foods right so it’s it’s interesting how the even the urban planning takes place where some communities are food deserts While others have food lots of food options like all of this makes a difference in like nutrition how children grow up the inequities children face when they’re even just trying to get from home to school so I go to this other liquor store and um there’s a police officer right in front of the liquor store I’m like okay good this office is going to help me right the back of his car said uh to Serve and Protect right so I get up to the office or I knock on his window I’m like officer sir officer um someone stole my bike can you please help me out out sir um he’s over there the bicycles over there will you help me and I thought I was it’s like a movie right I’m gonna jump in the car through his window and we’re gonna drive 100 miles an hour with

the siren spitting and he’s gonna pull up right to the guy and and and bump his bumper into the guys you know back tire and the guy’s gonna go flying in the air and then I’m gonna get my bike and the guy’s gonna get arrested right that’s what I imagine because that’s what I would see in movies cops doing so I I I I get a response from him and he looks at me first he looks at me really like with the serious look and he says to me you want your bicycle back you go and get it yourself in this moment I felt abandoned I felt alone and I feel like no one had my back right so this is the beginning of me as a child seeing that the adults in my community some of them are not doing good things right like the guy that pulled the gun on me I couldn’t rely on my neighbors right at least some of them right so they weren’t there for me and that even right the the state right in this case a police officer was not there to protect me and maybe he was there to police me as later on as a teenager but not to protect me I realized this really quickly I realized from this officer that I had to take justice into my own hands and and I

remember that day being like Oh okay from now on just as in my own hands and later on as a teenager I end up joining a gang and and doing bad stuff on the street taking Justice into my own hands so these two examples are about and many others too with my mom and her boss exploiting her right or in the apartment complex we lived in you know it was owned by a slum Lord the guy owned 50 building buildings and when the crack addicts would break our window and we’d call them up this this guy uh landlord would replace the window with plywood not not a normal window again plywood sometimes we had to run an orange extension cord from the neighbor’s house just to get a light bulb it was this kind of situation and one day this landlord ragged to me that my mom had paid for his mortgage I think he was trying to teach me how to do that later on in life but it was really disrespectful because he said to me look Victor your mom’s a Mexican immigrant I know that Mexican immigrants pay the rent so what I did is I said I’m gonna buy this apartment complex for eight thousand dollars we get this Mexican immigrant you’re a mom to pay me

rent and then she’s gonna bring her brothers and cousins and uncles and Friends to populate the building and everyone’s going to pay me rent and he showed me a file this thick of all the apartment complexes he owned in Oakland California and he says it’s all because of your mom Victor and my mom at that time owned no properties right so so people stripping people of their dignity whether it was this guy who pulled the gun on me so people being violent whether it was the officer not protecting me as a child stripping me of my dignity whether it’s my mom being exploited for her labor being stripped to dignity or whether it’s renters poor people being exploited by those people that are just let’s just say I agreedy right so my purpose in life is like okay let’s find a way to bring dignity back to individuals who have been stripped of their dignity you know growing up in this environment um you know I struggled a lot by high school this is my report card I’m going to show you my report card I just found it the other day you see it’s great uh ninth grade um hey I gotta be in English that’s cool

um and then I got F’s and then by spring semester it’s all laughs I dropped out and then the beginning of 10th grade you see that I’m also all that’s so I was dropped out I wasn’t in school at all okay and so um you know I’m on the streets I’m in and out of juvie the reason I think I took it really really difficult really hard and the moment I decided to drop out of school was my little cousin uh he was living in that apartment complex I was talking about and he was two months old he’s a baby he’s my neighbor and we had big rats in our apartment complex and the landlord wouldn’t get rid of the rats so this land this this landlord would just ignore any requests we ever made to fix anything so one day middle of the night uh my little you know cousin sleeping in his crib his mama’s sleep next to him and uh the rats crawled on his crib and they began to chew his face up they chewed his lips his gums his cheeks by the time his mom got up and realized what’s going on his little face well was in a pool of blood and he had to be sent to the hospital his little face had to get fixed and at this time I told myself

I don’t want to be poor anymore I don’t want to live like this anymore I want to get my family out of poverty so that’s when I first I started pushing lawnmowers it wasn’t paying enough money then I ended up on the streets I’m on the streets in and out of juvie because I was stealing cars and I didn’t care because I was fatalistic I thought I wouldn’t make it to my 18th birthday I thought I would end up dead or in prison this is what happens to people whose dignity gets stripped away from them they they end up not seeing or feeling a purpose in life like nothing to live for sometimes right and so in that moment no one could reach me right and also I had no adults in my life my mom she was too busy surviving and so I didn’t I didn’t really have a bond with her because she was just trying to pay the bills so that we wouldn’t end up homeless because even you know there was times we got kicked out of apartments and we ended up sleeping under trees at the park so she she was just hustling to pay the bills and that just left us abandoned my brother and I so I didn’t have anyone around and I

didn’t have a purpose I didn’t think about a future right because I was going to end up dead like the people around me or in prison and so I’m in and out of juvie I didn’t care and um one day I’m out of uh prison I mean out of juvie thinking I’m gonna end up in prison and I don’t care so I’m in and out of juvie and um I’m with my best friend we go to the other side of town and visit some girls we met and um guys we were fighting over there pulled out a gun my best friend was shot and killed in this moment I didn’t know who to turn to I didn’t know where to go there was only one person in my life uh that had told me that she would be there for me my teacher Miss Russ yeah hey um Miss Russ was the kind of teacher that was always in your business hey Miss Perez was the kind of teacher she didn’t care you know as you can see we have different skin complexions right and we lived in the really tough part of town and she would be the only white person that would drive into my neighborhood ever and she drive into my neighborhood neighborhood in her beat up Honda Civic Park right in front of us and there was

a bunch of teenage kid boys you know being tough in the front of the complex we caught this place El gallinero the chicken coop because that’s where all of us lived and in this chicken coop apartment complex and she would knock on every door check up on the families of kids who were not even in school anymore right we were dropped out and so she would check up on us she wouldn’t care if she was a brave lady she was a lifesaver a life changer a transformative teacher a mentor a sage that lady was incredible but I ignored her for three years from ninth grade to 11th grade oh I want to save your life I don’t want you to save my life all I want to help you and I want you to help me I’m not ready and so I ignored her but one day when I felt alone I remember that she had said to me Victor when you’re ready I’ll be here so I’m walking down the hallway in school and there’s going to be a video here that’s going to play and it’ll Loop every minute and you’ll see it’s on national TV on PBS front lines just happens to capture me in my high school years and you’ll see me walking down the hall and then I’m in this fight and then

a police officer actually pulls me away and then you’ll see a little bit of my family in the background there and it’ll loop loop again but I want to show you the video because that’s the same hallway I returned to when I was looking for my teacher so there I am here I’ll get out the way for a second [Music] is the fight there’s a police officer taking me away [Music] and there you’ll see my family in the backdrop there but all to say that when I was ready I remembered what this mentor of mine this teacher had said to me she said when you’re ready I’ll be here for you Victor so I go back to her and she comes out of her class she knows I’m at school I’m in the hallway there she comes out of her class and she says Victor uh I heard what happened are you okay and I’m trying to be a tough guy right because you know you got to be tough in these hallways so I’m trying to be a tough guy right and I’m in these hallways right here that are showing right now in the background and she says are you okay I’m like yeah I’m all right and this lady Taps me on my shoulder and right when she tapped me

on my shoulder all my pain all my fear all my anger begin to grow and I began to cry like a little kid in front of the whole school you know what this teacher did she opened her arms she gave me a hug she said Victor I’m here for you if you’re ready to change your life around I’ll be here for you but you have to do the work you have to do the work she had high expectations for me hi rigor I met her expectations I met her rigor I had stopped learning in third grade because I just didn’t like school anymore because the teacher and a principal had done something really bad to me and I was like I don’t like school I hate school what the teacher and the principal did is that I wouldn’t read third grade I wouldn’t I sat in the front of class and I wouldn’t read the board and my teacher thought I was being a tough guy that was trying to prove that you know I was I wasn’t smart or something and she blamed me for you know being what she called a wannabe which is a wannabe gangster she’s like stop being a wannabe get out of here she kicks me out of class what she did not realize is that the reason I wouldn’t read the

board is because I needed glasses right so she was blaming me for a condition I had she didn’t realize I had it but she thought I was trying to be a gangster just because I came from a gangster neighborhood right so then the principal kicked me out of school my mom remember she was at Sizzler she was mad she had to leave work because she got in trouble and she beat me from third grade to 11th grade I have read not one assignment not completed not one assignment read not one book I was done with school so I had a huge learning loss and a lot of people you know lose hope all these kids you know like they they their parents aren’t around they don’t have any education they’re way behind they’re not literate some of them don’t even know how to read that was me and it turns out that I’ve written six books right and English professors assign my work and they’ll say this is a great example journalism professors inside my books this is a great example of great writing and then they’ll invite me to come speak and I’m like are you sure you got the right person because I don’t consider myself a great writer so the irony that

this world has to offer us folks that on the one hand we’re an underdog we’re seen as you know in my in my experience seen us from a criminalized community where people are not going to make it you know starting from being seen as illegal crossing the border to then seen as as nothing but you know want to be gang members in schools and then with police not helping us right that kind of stuff happened so that that’s the systematic strip stripping of dignity I’m talking about to all of a sudden redeeming redeeming that dignity right and that’s what my life goal is about right because now I’m able to say look people thought I was this but I turned out to be this and then some people say to me oh Victor you know like you’re like Horatio Alger like you know the American dream like pick yourself up by the bootstraps that’s awesome Victor and I’m like no no disrespect to what you think of me or how you think of me but I ain’t no Horatio Alder see Horatio altar lifted himself up by the bootstraps Horatio Alder was independently genius and just did it on his own right when in reality the research shows that the number one

way that people succeed in this country intellectually academically and financially and career-wise is through the networks of support that they have in other words someone gave us opportunity along the way to make it and if I don’t recognize those opportunities that people gave me then I just become another one of these people that say I made it on my own and look at me now I’m a professor one of the most highly decorated sociologists in the country and also an independent business owner with a very successful consulting firm and I’ve raised my kids and now they’re both you know I have twins in college they’re engineering Majors I used to stress about how I was going to pay for their college and now their college is paid for ahead of time right so I could say I made it and I did it with my genius but that’s not how I made it how I made it was a mentor like Miss Russ how I made it was programs that help minority kids like me in college how I made it was because my children when they were in preschool when I was in grad school raising them you know I had a state of California a grant that that that paid for Head Start

for them to be in preschool while I went to grad school how I made it is because people cared to develop programs for for people like me who had grown up in environments where dignities had been stripped away from us that’s how I made it and by the way that’s how most people right some people will say you know oh yeah you know I made it on my own I had no one I could say the same thing but in reality if we look at our networks our background parental education you know like all of that comes into play you know very few human beings out there actually made it on their own without those networks and those supports and that includes me without mistress I wouldn’t have made it so I go to her this lady sees me suffering crying in front of the whole school this tough guy gives me a hug he says to me I’ll be here for you but you have to do the work and start catching up on my units on my credits you saw my report card I was way behind way behind started catching up zero period at seven in the morning at lunchtime extra credit she sent me to the Community College that’s another program that helped me the Community

College was helping kids recover their credits I’m a firm supporter of the community college system because they’re supporting people that need Second Chances so I go to night school there they help me recover my credits they gave me another Mentor they gave me tons of mentors actually then Miss Russ comes up to me she says Victor I’m so proud of you I knew you could do it now it’s time to go to college I’m like college me man what is this teacher smoking thinking I’m going to college I’m supposed to be a mechanic make 15 an hour he’s like no Victor let me show you she started doing a financial plan for me 10 years from now how much money I need to make to pay a mortgage to be able to raise children if I decide to have children to have a nice car I realized uh oh I have to go to college I apply to college I get accepted under special programs right for kids that grew up in poverty and I’m proud of it I’m never going to be ashamed of having been accepted to college under special programs for kids that grow up in poverty I have to say it because we need to continue those programs I get there they Mentor me they guide me

I catch up on my learning I’m working full time while going to school full time I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area I went to Cal State East Bay it was in Hayward California I’ll take the BART and go all the way into the city San Francisco to work full-time and I would listen to cassette tapes my professors on cassette tapes that’s how I took my courses on the BART system sometimes I would just go in a big loop around the Bay Area on the BART system just to finish my homework right it was the safest place I could actually study so all to say that I get through college I ended up applying to get what I thought was the highest degree I could possibly get the PHD I apply to Berkeley got accepted four and a half years later after enrolling at the University of California Berkeley and while having twins having children and while working almost full time in the Year 2005 I became Dr Victor Rios so folks my point here is that I was able to redeem that purpose that maybe others participating and stripping away from me but I also participating in stripping away from myself the dignity right and the way we recovered dignity

is through figuring out how our purpose guides us right so I grew up on the streets on the radio on TV thinking that this was a purpose right here my appearance money and power that like that’s that was my goal in life appearance money power so my first degree was a business degree you know like my major I didn’t I didn’t actually finish the major I I actually finished the human development major because after a while I realized wait a minute that’s not my true purpose I got to be financially stable but do I really need um you know for me Victor Rios because Victor Rios need to live a life where he’s just obsessed with money appearance and power and early on I was like no you know what I need to do is I have to have internal peace I have to have healthy relationships and I have to be an emotional architect okay so we we understand internal peace that’s like I have a lot of ghosts in my past I have a lot of demons under my bed and sometimes they come out right you know like I have PTSD right and people think PTSD you go to therapy a couple years it goes away but PTSD lives with you probably for the rest of your

life at least that’s been my experience and um so on a regular basis every month every other month I go to therapy I do mindfulness do yoga you know like whatever it is I work out almost every day because Zach helps me stay grounded that’s the internal peace right the soul work healthy relationships making sure I have the right people in my life that are going to prop Me Up not bring me down right and and and and finally to be an emotional architect is to help design environments where people do not feel like their dignity is being Stripped Away where people feel like their dignity is being enhanced that’s the emotional architecture so that’s been sort of the purpose I’ve had when it comes to trying to make an impact and one of the ways we do that very practically is through mentoring right so that if I can repeat what Miss Russ did for me for others then guess what if I could do it for one kid I have my my life mission has been accomplished this is what we’ve done you know traveling the country both in person and virtually thousands and thousands of kids virtually and virtual has been powerful

because while I’m talking to kids virtually they actually pop in their chat they’ll start popping up all kinds of very personal things they’re going through and I’m able to work with them in a way that I can’t in person so it’s been very powerful to work with them uh continuing that Journey bringing my UCSB students um into different communities to help Mentor I wanted to show you this picture because why why you look at the picture of that probation car so there’s a probation car in this kid at Sami Sami speaking [Music] and actually he had read my book he read my book I wrote a book for kids for teenagers that were you know getting in trouble so he’s on probation so the probation officer says I’m taking you to see Dr Victor Rios he’s this is in Sacramento California he said oh yeah um I want to go see him I read his book probation officer pulls up with the kid in the back of the car the kid sees me she’s so excited he breaks out of the probation car you can see him opening the door and I’m like oh my goodness probation officer gets out and of course wants to get the kid in trouble write him up you know give him

more you know refer him to go back to juvie and I said officer please you know this comes from a good place the kid you know just wanted to connect with me um it was a beautiful moment to see like this kid’s willing to break out of his probation car to come and see me it was powerful powerful to see that so that work we do we continue to do uh our goal has been at the center where I work at the university has been uh to generate a model template program for mentoring that could be used across organizations corporate and non-profit across the country so I developed a mentoring program for Dell and and what I did for them was that the engineers that throughout the country that want to go and help kids in the inner city now have a toolkit to use when they want to connect with kids because it’s kind of awkward sometimes to just sit there and like hey how’s your day and the kids like you know so we developed a template program with activities and with training a video training for them so now what I want to do is I want to expand that I want to be able to use a platform where it and it’s a free

resource that anyone any organization uh any non-profit every any Corporation any school can go to and say we have a toolkit let’s let’s go and reach out to local community members that are successful that are wanting it live a purpose of helping others and they could be there to guide these children so that’s been um my kind of Journey in terms of the the work I’ve been wanting to do I’m I’m setting up a couple links here for you in the chat one is or um any of you interested in donating to the to the center where I’m developing the mentoring project that’s at the University of California Santa Barbara the other one is for an organization I personally donate to myself now now that I’m a little bit more financially stable than I was um say five ten years ago and I’m able to donate to others I look for organizations that I love I love this organization it’s called twinspire uh and it’s uh twin boys that grew up in Compton they were foster kids and they now started a non-profit it helped other foster kids I love it one of the boys I Mentor his name is he’s not a boy anymore he’s a man uh his name is his

name is Demonte Thompson and he’s a student at UCLA getting a doctorate degree so I’m with him on the phone every week like hey Dr Rios how do I how do I write this paper I’m like hey calm down the mate I got you you know so I donate personally to that organization um it’s a beautiful organization and then if you want to either donate or be part of volunteering for a National Organization because some of you are all over the country then you go to the Boys and Girls Club they’re great you know they they do great work with inner city kids it’s a great organization to either volunteer for or donate to and finally that last link is the links for you to watch my full documentary so with that said folks again that the dignifying purpose that I’ve been able to create for myself has been to help others uplift their their own dignity so that they can find a purpose and be able to become change Aid agents and because of someone [Music]

like Miss Russ because of her I was able to make it this far so I’m always grateful to those beautiful people out there wanting to make a difference in the world my name is Dr Victor Rios and I want to thank you for your time thank you so much Dr Rios that was uh incredible to be able to hear your story and to just be inspired um by your purpose to be able to help people really uh recover their dignity and you know I wanted to open up the questions uh to our community and I have a number of uh questions that have come to me directly so I’m going to just share these with you uh first one is kind of just general Dr Rios I’ve read your books I volunteer at the boys and girls club and I would like to understand better about marginalized children and how I can help them so you mentioned you know volunteering at the boys and girls club like what else can can people do if they want to help this community well there’s there’s a lot of things we could do right um I think first and foremost is connecting with those which are the the great local non-profits that and if you ask enough people that are involved in the

community they’ll Point them out right they’ll say oh these people right here they’re doing a great job with kids that really need it um so identifying the local nonprofits that are due because they’re sometimes not recognized that well and not funded well local Grassroots nonprofits that are doing the work directly with the kids right so that would be number one um and when I say have an impact with them I mean both uh volunteer and also you know donate right one or the other because the volunteer work matters a lot as well there was a group of 20 of us mentors some of us Professionals in different industries that went into watts in La just to help 40 kids that had dropped out of school and that became the basis of the film The push-outs that I I put the link for and and um none of them had experience in you know helping kids out we all kind of learned as we went developed a platform and a framework for it but these volunteers made a huge difference so you can you can actually physically right walk in there and provide some skill sets that children young people need you know financial literacy uh thinking

about college um what what degrees to get all of that good stuff is I think important for us to have the human Capital along with the financial Capital as well that’s great well you’re speaking our language because we talk about wealth across 11 dimensions and we know finances is just one of those 11 . another question for you Dr Rios is did you feel you had dignity when you were in a gang and if so how would you help a gang member find dignity outside of the game yeah so this is a good question this is like you know my area of research and so we it’s a surrogate family it’s a street family right the gang is so like you know and think of Beyond gangs like any group that makes you feel belonging like we think of it um yeah any group out there that makes you feel a sense of belonging you get lost in that group we think of a like drug addiction too like you know drug drug addicts uh tend to kind of congregate with each other and that that’s another family right this is an addiction family and then we could think of other groups that get together you know uh and and maybe not doing healthy

things for themselves or for society right so these groups the reason they come together is because there isn’t a another kind of replacement for that so we have to create surrogate families for people that are kind of gravitate towards uh being part of a family that takes care of them when they haven’t been taken care of so the dignity has been stripped away from them they go hang out with a group that makes them feel like their dignity is being recovered but we know it’s not so we provide a family structure for them in a in a healthy environment that provides some internal peace healthy relationships and allows them to learn how to be emotional Architects so one big policy I’ve been working on is to to have schools become community serving institutions in other words that schools we we help teachers out by allowing success coaches to go in mentors during the school day and if kids getting in trouble they go to a success coach not just getting kicked out of school and on the streets and then a cop Picks Them Up in a success coach helps them out and and helps them plan and helps them do conflict

resolution and then after school there’s programs for these kids and their families at the school but it’s not the teachers running it because they have to rest we’re talking about professionals that come in and run those programs as well so that’s something I think for me that’s very important creating those surrogate families that are healthy for kids that are looking for a replacement or maybe a family they haven’t had yeah absolutely okay this is a interesting question I’ll just read it in full uh Dr Rios I care about marginalized Youth and I live in a city where I often see them when I walk by I’d like to start a conversation yet I feel such a divide exists as an older white male in a suit how can I bridge this Gap in this setting so I’m picturing this business guy walking like in the inner city how do you like and you see you sitting on the side can they approach him how do you bridge that how do you take that divide away it’s a tough one look at Miss Russ you you know of course she was a teacher so she was already like we had kind of understood who she was but we always would be like you know let you know lady

get out of my you know get out of my face right so you’re gonna get some pushback sometimes especially by young people because young people could be very awkward especially at coming out of the pandemic I’m just going to tell you all one thing that our schools are suffering with and I was just at a local high school where the freshman couldn’t make eye contact with me the Freshman uh you know looked pretty down I was you know speaking to them and I lift their spirits up but it took a long time to do that and every administrator and teacher I’m talking to across the country will say this ninth graders are acting like seventh graders fifth graders are acting like third graders during the pandemic what we lost was social skill sets 21st century skill sets the kinds of skill sets many of you are from the corporate world you understand these skill sets because those are the skill sets that determine success in the workplace those skill sets were lost by a lot of these children how do I engage with someone how do I how do I read the situation going on in this room how do I you know have uh you know confidence in speaking

all of that got lost and so what I’m trying to say here is that you’re going to encounter even and it’s highly more impacted with inner city kids but even our middle class kids you know are kind of a little awkward they’re post pandemic kids right so we need a platform that teaches all kids these 21st century skill sets that that matter in the workplace but they’re also so it’s also called third space thinking I’m a fellow at University of Southern California in a center there for third space thinking and that’s that kind of thinking that allows you you know it’s been featured in Forbes and stuff allows you to to to create skill sets for future success in the workplace right no emotional architecture I’ve been talking about so all to say that when you’re trying to connect be okay with rejection and and some of you are the best of at be rejected because you wouldn’t be successful if you were not okay with rejection so when you’re trying to help kids out you’re walking by them be okay with them ignoring you be okay with them flipping you off you know be okay with them feeling threatened and just try to

make that human connection because you will run into that one kid one day that will say yes mister I would need I I will take your help Miss Russ connected me with a banker for a mentor and uh I was shy about telling you the story but I got to be real with you this Banker his name was Dick Haggerty and you know my culture there’s not a lot of guys named dick right so I would but first of all make fun of him right for having that name and then second of all he would take me to lunch you know in a fancy restaurant in Berkeley California every once a week and the only reason I would meet him there was for a free lunch so I was like using the guy and making fun of his name and he was always in a suit you know dig Haggerty and I would just laugh at the guy but whenever we had lunch you know I didn’t talk much I was just scarfing down that free lunch right and whenever we had lunch I’m scarfing down my free lunch and this guy’s dropping knowledge on me he’s like look Victor you know when when you turn 18 you should open a 401 you know a cow you know look Victor you know you could accumulate two million dollars by the

time you’re 40 I should have listened to him by the way I never did he’s like look Victor you know um when you when you start you know the job uh in the corporate world this is the skill set we’re looking for you should develop it a little more here look look I’m just gonna teach you something I know you’re probably taught not to look at people in the eyes in your culture and that’s okay you know sometimes that’s a sign of respect to not look at people in the eyes but in America you need to look at me in the eyes sometimes and shake my hand and and you know give me a firm handshake to close that business transaction and um I think he was reading the art of the deal right anyway but he would he would teach me that and I would momentarily stop from scarfing my food down and just look at him in the eyes and be like yeah Mr Dick yeah Mr Dick you know just eat my food but I remember that guy taught me how to make eye contact right in the professional world and it was something very subtle but it I kept it with me so he taught me a lot even though he probably felt like he was wasting his time and his money

buying the street kid some free lunch right so you never know what seed you’re planting for people you connect with even if sometimes they don’t show how grateful they are for the work you’re doing and by the way you’re not doing it so people are grateful to you you’re not doing it to be a savior you’re doing it just to plant seeds out there and see how those seeds can develop in the future I wish I could connect with Dick and let him know hey dick thanks for teaching me how to make eye contact with people you know because now that’s what I do as a profession I’m a speaker I got to make eye contact with you you got a lot more than a free lunch from him yep another uh question here is Dr Rios how do we engage the parents of these kids we’re talking about in order to get better results when we help these kids I currently volunteer for the boys and girls club but I want to know how can we engage with the parents so there’s a picture here I wanted to show you again of me working I believe let’s see where is it with parents and um so I have a whole I call it the parent University because one of the

things is like we could help kids all we want but if their parents are not kind of in the no all right sorry I lost track of the picture but if the parents are not kind of on board um then we’re not going to get get far and so um you know a lot of us and my wife actually she’s a professor at the University also she does research on parent literacy and um what she has found is that if you give an intervention of five hours to Immigrant parents who sometimes we stereotype as like oh they’re fixing their culture or they’re fixing their ways they’ll never learn she gave them five hours this was uh I’ll give you a quick example um mothers to talk about with their teenage daughters about sex right so that she captured it on video and the mothers were terrified they didn’t want to talk you know they’re Catholic you know they’re going like this they don’t want to talk and then she gave them five weeks of one hour conversations about this this very heavy topic and then she videotaped them again and these mothers were asked talk to daughter about sex you know and all that stuff that comes with it and you could see them flowing

conversation mother to daughter look honey this is what’s gonna happen this is what how you should protect yourself this is the kind of I’ve learned in the workshop this kind of things that can happen this is sorry I’ve been so conservative about or whatever it is and it turned out that a very little bit of investment in educating adults that maybe don’t have right the proper education to really be there for their children pays off so that’s why I’m always with school districts I’m always doing a parental component right parent education because you’re right let’s help the parents too and it doesn’t cost a lot right you just bring professionals that maybe once in a while serve a little meal and then you have parents I even do um virtual parent trainings too and parents that care will be there and there’s a lot of parents that care but we’re just not offering those courses for them wonderful well I’ll have Chrissy put in the chat again your website so people can tap into some of those parent trainings and other programs and workshops that you’re putting on a couple more questions here and then

we’ll close uh fostering is something that I hope to do in the future however I feel unprepared I know many kinds of kids you end up in the Foster system and I they come from different backgrounds besides volunteering with the boys and girls club what are other ways to prepare yourself to be great for those that you Foster

you know more power to you I think life has already given you that that preparation and I think it is about setting up that network with folks that already do this kind of work that tell look this is how like because foster kids not gonna lie they’re tough kids I’ve worked with them they’re really tough because they’ve been through a lot a lot of them are so you got to be ready to take on a lot of adversity that that child kind of puts out also the child might take it out on you because they’re gonna be like you know my my sister my sister-in-law’s a social worker that takes in her and my brother taking foster kids on temporary basis anyway long story short one thing I’ve learned from mentoring them through my family and they’ve become part of my family is that they start their their first few weeks you know blaming or even attacking you know saying the family like that that Fosters I’m like it’s your you know your fault taking it out on the family right so you have to be ready for that because and not take it personal just know they’re they’re coming from a systematic stripping of dignity

throughout their lifetimes and your job is to help them recover their dignity right enhance their dignity so you want to rely on people in your life that are positive want to rely on programs around you that could support them and you want to just be patient and ride the wave because after that you know that phase two three months later you got kids that are like this is my family and I appreciate you yeah all right last question for you Victor uh if internships at local businesses were offered to this community would these kids be interested and if so would they be dependable so you know hey I have a business how could we give exposure to some of these kids to come work in a professional setting to learn about the handshake and the eye contact how can we bridge that Gap it’s a I’m not going to lie to you it is a tough one at the center for third space thinking at USC we’re actually developing modules uh to teach this kind of this kind of training right we call it third space thinking but for you it’s very practical skill sets that you’re you know your employees need to have right like how to make eye contact how

to listen to an employer how to follow directions how to you know follow through how to craft an email that says look boss it’s Friday afternoon even though it’s TGIF here are the five things I did this week right that kind of stuff that skill set we’re helping uh young people to develop it because one thing we know the K-12 system and even the university system which I’m part of is not teaching kids those skill sets so I’m not going to lie to you some of these kids are going to show up and they’re not going to be ready for you but you have that’s where you have to be patient right because um they will be they they will have learned something from you that maybe benefits another employer in the future but you did give them an opportunity to learn right so it’s like can I if I give an internship well people would be ready especially the higher higher risk folks the answer is probably going to be not really but you’re giving them a skill set that then later on they might carry with them quick example there was a German auto repair shop that joined a program with my high school when I was a

senior to hire students they hired me and I was helping them do oil changes and that kind of stuff anyway then I became um kind of you know a absent employee once in a while and they helped me accountable they’re like Victor you haven’t been around we’re gonna fire you and I was like what they’re like yeah it was my first job too you’re gonna fire it I have been there three months I love my job but I wouldn’t call in to call in sick or any of that I was hanging out with my friends and they fired me and that’s the biggest lesson I learned like well I need to be Dependable than my other jobs I never got fired again now the German repair shop auto repair shop you know probably doesn’t realize they taught me a lesson they probably just think remember that delinquent kid we hired it was it was no good well they taught me not to ever write um you know be unreliable at work and ever since I’ve never got fired from any other job well Dr Rios it’s been an absolute pleasure having you with us today thank you for being such an inspiration not just to us but to these hundreds of thousands of children and administrators

and teachers and their families you’re doing truly meaningful work and you’ve showed us such a great example of making an impact with your life so thank you for everything you’re doing keep leaning in we’ll keep cheering you on and I’m really happy to be able to have shared your story with our community uh inspired living programs at Mission wealth are about expanding people’s perspectives Beyond just the balance sheet about how we can make an impact is what we touched on today and we have other very powerful speakers on different subjects around these 11 dimensions of life so we encourage you to participate I wanted to let you know we do have an upcoming event called a wisdom share where we will have a crowd-sourced wisdom shared across our clients and across our advisors to reimagine your new year across those 11 Dimensions so please feel free to join us at that next inspired living event we truly appreciate your feedback so you’ll be getting a survey we ask that you complete the survey we’d love to know what you enjoyed about today’s presentation how we could improve and what would be some future topics you’d

love us to bring speakers uh to touch on so thank you again Dr Rios thank you everyone for joining us today and I hope you have a wonderful day thank you take care bye-bye

[Music]