September 5, 2024
Dear Friends, Colleagues y Familia:
It is with a heart full of gratitude that I share with you my decision to transition from my role as President and CEO of the Latino Policy Forum in 2025. The Board of Directors will soon begin a search for my successor, and I will officially step down from my role when that person is hired. At that point, I will step into a new role as a senior advisor to ensure a smooth transition through 2025. After nearly 16 years at the helm of the Forum, I am ready to hand off this unique and amazing institution to the next generation of leaders to usher in the next phase of growth and impact.
Many of you know that my surname, “Puente,” means “bridge” in Spanish. But few of you know that my personal mission statement is “to build bridges of understanding and opportunity within and between the Latino community and larger society.” This personal mission has been my North Star, and I have been profoundly blessed to live it over the last 16 years as a steward of the Latino Policy Forum.
I transition from this role at a good time. We have built and grown an amazing team that has impacted the lives of so many in our community, (see below for some highlights), and together, built real pathways to a more equitable future for Latinos in Illinois.
We have greatly expanded our scope from our first issue area of early education and 3 staff. We have built a sound infrastructure, growing our budget by 400% and securing our future with $2 million in an endowment and reserves.
I thank you — all the staff, board members, funders and allies, past and present — for your support. Thank you for walking this path with me, for believing and investing your time, talent, energy, and resources into the vision that “advancing Latinos advances a shared future for all of us.”
While there is still much to do to obtain equity and justice, I am thrilled to witness the progress of the Latino community, Forum alumni who are doing amazing work, and the next generation of political and community leadership. As the organization continues its next chapter, I am confident that the Forum will continue to serve and improve the lives of Latino children and families, and that the Forum will continue “to speak truth, advocate for justice, act with civility and integrity, and put trust in democracy.”
Peace and radical blessings,
P.S. I am amazed at what we have built and accomplished together! These are just some of the highlights:
- Today, more children have access to early education which began with collective advocacy to pass legislation that allocated $25 million to build early childhood education centers; the nation’s first ever capitol project of its kind.
- In Illinois all children, regardless of immigration status, have access to early childhood education because we worked to enshrine nondiscrimination protections for undocumented children in the state’s new Department of Early Childhood.
- During the Covid pandemic, which disproportionately hurt Latino families, 65,000 Illinois families, including 7,000 Latino families, were able to stay in their homes via a state program that invested nearly $500 million in rental and housing assistance.
- Today, there is hope for more than 40,000 undocumented immigrants in Illinois to get legal work authorization and apply for legal permanent residency without having to separate from their families in order to do so. Our collective victory in Illinois to pass the Work Permits for All resolution was a catalyst for the most significant action on immigration policy since DACA.
- Thousands of parents and communities have been empowered to advocate for themselves, their families, and communities because of Forum trainings on their rights to access bilingual education, fair housing and their rights as immigrants.
- Informed by our data analysis of how systemic problems, and promising solutions, impact our families and communities, our leaders in Springfield and City Hall are better able to champion policies that make a difference for Latinos.
- We helped shine a light on the devastating and urgent impact Covid-19 had on Latinos and through the incubation of Illinois Unidos, a broad-based coalition of leaders, developed and implemented a response. We led research and data collection analysis to advocate for an equitable allocation of Chicago and Illinois relief funds to the most vulnerable Latino communities.
- Latino leaders work and speak as a collective through the Illinois Latino Agenda, a Forum initiative that builds unity, trust and community among Latino leaders throughout the state.
- In Chicago and Illinois, our community didn’t sit idly by as thousands of new migrants, including children and expectant parents, came to our city seeking safety and opportunity. By creating the Welcome to Illinois coalition, government, philanthropy, service providers, and everyday people and volunteers came together to share information, resources, and level partnership to address the humanitarian crisis on our hands.
- Throughout our state, there is a vast, powerful, and inspiring network of nearly 300 Black and Latino leaders trained in the Multicultural Leadership Academy. This network works to dismantle the silos of segregation in our city and region and uplifts and empowers our communities.