My Father and I's Legacy

I just had a really hard conversation with my dad - one that was waiting 24 years to happen. 

He came across my profile and called me this morning in a panic. 

For context, he recently retired from a long career in the federal government. As a Puerto Rican man who grew up on the streets in Brooklyn, that job required a significant amount of sacrifice, strategizing, and figuring out who he could and couldn’t trust. 

My dad is so incredibly proud of me. He’s cried at every graduation ceremony and asks every day how business is going. I ask him for advice every time I’m next door at his house, over a cafecito, how he would solve problems I’m having. 

He called me while I was drinking my coffee and preparing for the day. 

“Ally,” he said “you shouldn’t let everyone know your personal beliefs. You won’t get a lot of clients, and you’ll alienate your bosses. You won’t be able to move up.” 

I stopped for a second before responding. Instead of pushing back and talking about how everything is fine and I’m doing a good job, I asked him why he said that. 

He said “If I spoke out like you did, I wouldn’t have been able to take care of you or your brother. I had to think about our house, your college.” 

Following that, he told me about the environment he had to endure. Slurs thrown around the office, jokes made about people who looked just like us and spoke just like us. Jokes he was expected to laugh at. Lines drawn in the sand, people he smiled at who spit back in his face. Things he wished he could have said but he didn’t. 

“You have to make people happy, even when you don’t agree with them.” 

Don’t agree with them - like it was differences in opinion on a football team. 

I thought at that moment that my world, the world of business and finance, still looks very similar to the one he faced every day for over 30 years. Not a lot of faces like mine, a dominant culture that can chew you up and spit you out at a moment’s notice. 

I told him then that yes, it would be hard for me. But I had made a decision. A decision about how I wanted to show up every day, the person I wanted to be, the business I wanted to build. 

He made these sacrifices to provide for me. I owe it to him now to live my life differently. 

I have a voice, I intend to use it. 

I told him “If someone has a problem with me being a woman, or Latina, or Jewish, or anything - I don’t want to work with them.” 

Me, having that choice - it hadn’t even occurred to him. 

There’s so much power, and privilege, in me being able to exercise that choice. 

I’m not the professional for everybody - and not everybody is the client for me. I’m here to help people. I’m here to do my job. I’m also here to be respected. Those things are not in opposition. 

In fact, I know in my core that there are people who are looking for someone exactly like me. People who have been afraid of my world for so long, so they keep their dreams and goals around their personal finances locked away. They are out there, and waiting for me to say “I see you, let’s work together.” 

I owe it to them to show up, every day. I owe it to my community to find them. I owe it to everyone who has come before me, and everyone I meet, to have these hard conversations.

I want other women just like me, trying to make it in world that wasn’t made for them, to look at me and say “She is unafraid. I don’t have to be afraid either. She is outspoken, she is smart, she knows what she’s doing - just like me.” 

I want to leave a legacy. Legacies are not made by standing on the sidelines. 

By the end of the call, he was still concerned. But I told him I understood, and thanked him for sharing his experiences with me. I told him I would be more than alright. I said I loved him and said I had a client call to take. 

Today is the start of me showing him that truth.