What it’s been like to begin here

I entered the workforce already understanding systems from my lived experience.

I understood what happens when systems fail. I understood what it means to navigate instability, to read between the lines, to anticipate what others don’t even register as a threat yet. That kind of awareness doesn’t come from a classroom. It comes from experience.

When the inauguration happened, it was not symbolic to me. It was a crisis.

Not just because of who was being sworn in — but because of the response around me. Or rather, the lack of one. There were sighs. There was discomfort. A quiet, shared recognition that something was wrong. But there was no plan. No forward motion. No strategy. Just a collective, suspended “oh shit.”

And I realized very quickly: I could not live like that.

Waiting and seeing has never been a luxury afforded to people like me. Not when you understand how quickly things can shift. Not when you know how policy translates into lived reality — into neighborhoods, into households, into fear.

I was often the brownest person in the room. Often the most “foreign,” whether or not that label was spoken out loud.

And over time, something else became clear.

I could go months without meeting another Latino in a professional setting. Months without hearing Spanish in the workplace. Months without encountering someone who understood, instinctively, what it means when ICE is in the neighborhood — not as a headline, but as a real disruption to daily life. I couldn’t tell you a single time I’ve met someone from El Salvador or Guatemala, where my parents are from in my entire post grad career. Since 2019.

That absence isn’t neutral. It shapes how decisions are made. It shapes what is considered urgent. It shapes what gets ignored.

The deeper I moved into my career, the more I understood my role differently.

At first, I thought my value was in execution — in doing the work well, in being reliable, in navigating complexity quietly.

But over time, I realized my value was also in perspective.

I knew how systems break down. I knew where pipelines fail. I knew what it takes to move through uncertainty — not by waiting, but by planning, by pivoting, by treating instability as something to respond to, not observe. Especially when we were already given the chance to observe the first time.

That awareness is not always comfortable in professional spaces.

Because it disrupts the illusion that things are stable. That things will “work themselves out.” That neutrality is a position one can afford to take.

But neutrality, in moments of real change, is often just inaction.

And inaction has consequences.

What has stayed with me most is not just the political moment itself, but the realization that many of the people around me were experiencing it as an abstract shift — while for others, it was immediate, embodied, and real.

That gap in perception is where a lot of decisions are made.

It’s also where a lot of harm begins.

Over time, I’ve stopped questioning whether my perspective is “too much” or “too intense.”

It isn’t.

It is informed. It is grounded. And it is necessary.

Because in moments of uncertainty, the people who understand how systems actually operate — not how they are supposed to operate — are often the ones best equipped to navigate what comes next.

And increasingly, I’ve come to understand that this isn’t just something I carry.

It’s something I’m responsible for using.

Because I’m the first in the room, and often the only one in the room.