Sarina Pargas-Vega, student body president of Front Range Community College’s Boulder Campus, or FRCC, spearheaded the Future of Latinx Leadership Panel that took place earlier this week.
In 2019, Pargas-Vega attended a conference where she tuned into a presentation by Abenicio Rael about the importance of Latinx people achieving positions of leadership, specifically in Colorado communities.
“As a Latina student, it was special for me to see someone who resembled me doing a presentation like that,” Pargas-Vega said.
Feeling “moved” by Rael’s words, Pargas-Vega asked him if he would be interested in speaking at an event at FRCC, to which he replied positively. In 2020, Pargas-Vega planned a single guest speaker event to feature Rael, but the event was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Heading into her final year as a student at FRCC, Pargas-Vega “really wanted to do something special,” she said. She decided to give the Latinx leadership event one last chance to come to fruition – this time, on a grander scale.
In partnership with FRCC’s LEADS program – Latinx Excellence, Achievement and Development Scholars – Pargas-Vega created and planned the Future of Latinx Leadership Panel. In the end, the event that occurred on Tuesday “was better than I hoped for,” she said.
The event, attended by approximately 20 people in-person and more over Zoom, was structured as a panel discussion featuring five guest speakers. Pargas-Vega hand-selected each speaker for the unique perspectives she felt they could bring to the table.
Out of the five panelists, four of them have roots in the FRCC community: Director of FRCC’s TRIO Student Support Services Program Rebecca Chavez, Bilingual Admissions and Outreach Representative Susana Gallegos, student Astrid Villalobos and Rael, who is now FRCC’s executive director of equity and inclusion.
Dr. Judy Diaz Bonacuisti, the inaugural executive director of the Latinas First Foundation in Denver, also appeared on the panel.
Second-year FRCC student Astrid Villalobos was recruited as a panelist for her extensive involvement in programs at the college and in the community, Pargas-Vega said. Villalobos’s extracurricular activities range from serving as a member of FRCC’s student government and Latinx Club to volunteering for the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County.
For Villalobos, the event “was truly an awesome experience,” she said. “Above all, I was shocked to be sitting at a table alongside doctors, professionals and folks in higher education who I honestly thought I’d never be sitting next to; at least, not for a while.”
As Pargas-Vega and other audience members posed questions for the panelists during the event, “each speaker built upon the other speakers’ answers,” stimulating good discussion, Pargas-Vega said.
When describing their experiences from the event, both Pargas-Vega and Villalobos report that one question – “why is it important to cultivate Latinx leadership for future generations” – and it’s subsequent conversation stuck out to them in particular.
Pargas-Vega was especially inspired by Dr. Bonacuisti’s response to the question, which was based on the argument that Latinx leadership doesn’t need to be cultivated. Instead, “we already are leaders,” Pargas-Vega said. “We need to make sure that (Latinx) people have bigger voices and that they’re being heard.”
One key takeaway from the event was the understanding that leadership can be defined by many different criteria beyond what the current, dominant culture defines leadership as, Pargas-Vega said. “If we define leadership as one thing, we’re limiting ourselves,” she said. “People shouldn’t sell themselves short because they don’t currently match up with what’s thought of as a leader.”
Another important takeaway for Pargas-Vega is the importance of Latino students knowing their own history. “We have to recognize, ‘how can we move forward if we don’t know where we’ve been,’” she said.
The Future of Latinx Leadership Panel lasted for approximately two hours and was followed by conversations between audience members and panelists.
“People were asking panel members how they can get involved, how they can learn more and what they can do next,” Pargas-Vega said, “and that was my goal for the entire event. I wanted to spark conversations, inspire people and help them think of what they can do to further this cause.”
For Villalobos, if she and her fellow panelists were able to inspire at least one person who attended the event, it was a success.
“We’re trying to reach out to people about leadership development and (inspire them to be) allies in this community,” she said. “If one person in the audience asks about how to get started (as a leader), no matter how old or young they are, I think that’s definitely a success for this panel.”
