- [Narrator] Funding for this episode of "Que Pasa NJ" with Carlos Medina has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

The Engineers Labor Employer Cooperative 825.

PSE&G, (upbeat salsa music) ROI-NJ Business Magazine.

- Hola familia, welcome to this month's episode of "Que Pasa."

We have some great storytellers for you.

We have local singer songwriter Giselle Bellas, right here from Jersey City.

We have Maria Trusa, the founder of the social movement, Yo Digo No Más.

And we have Luis Alamo, the founder and CEO of the Alamo Insurance Group.

Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget to ask yourselves, que pasa?

(upbeat salsa music) And our first guest is Giselle Bellas, singer, songwriter, and activist.

Welcome to "Que Pasa."

- Oh my gosh, thank you so much.

So happy to be here.

- Jersey City's own.

- Yes, Jersey City, yeah.

I love Jersey City.

Ever since I got here, I've just been so happy.

It's such a great community of people and artists.

Jersey City's pretty awesome.

I think everyone knows that now, though.

We used to be like kind of a secret.

Now it's not a secret at all.

- It's not a secret (Giselle laughs) Cat's outta the bag.

- It's out, yeah, everyone knows.

(laughs) - So tell me your family's immigration story from Cuba.

- Yeah, so my grandmother, there's this thing where you basically, like, win the lotto and you get to bring just your immediate family.

And I believe she had maybe a day or two to pack up all her stuff.

And they just dropped her off in California.

So she was dropped off there, and she experienced an earthquake, and she had never experienced that before.

And so she took her, at the time, five children and they drove cross country to Miami where (chuckles) everyone else was.

Some people got dropped off there, and her siblings were there.

So yeah, and then my grandfather followed apparently in a car with a bunch of chickens in it.

(Carlos laughs) So that's the story I've been told.

And yeah, they didn't look back.

They do not miss the earthquakes, (chuckles) for that very brief period of time.

Just got dropped off.

- And what brought you from Miami to lovely Jersey City?

- Opera, actually.

- Opera?

- Yeah, opera did that.

And I was traveling all the time.

I had won a competition where I'd sang at Carnegie Hall, and I just kept coming back.

And my mom was not very happy about it.

You know how Cuban parents can be.

But I came and I didn't look back.

I used to work at the Met Opera in the gift shop, like working with the music buyer.

And these Cuban guys came in, and they're like "You have to move to Jersey City."

And that was it.

I didn't look back, and it's been so wonderful being here, and meeting everyone, and working together in the community, and I love it.

I love Jersey City.

(chuckles) - Tell me how your singing career is going.

What genre would you consider your music to be?

- Ugh, everyone asks, (Carlos laughs) and I give different answers depending on who I'm with.

So I got to write on a show on FX.

My producer invited me, and they said like, "They want you to write an opera."

And I was like, "Oh, okay."

And I started working on that show, not singing opera after that.

And I've been exploring different genres.

I've been called pop noir.

I'm a little theatrical.

I think that comes from the opera background.

But I write all different kinds of genres.

But I guess pop noir.

It's dark, but it's still pop.

But this new show that we're putting on, act one is entirely classical music and opera.

So, I don't know, I guess I do a little bit of everything.

- Tell our viewers about the big announcement.

- Yeah, so at JCTC, Jersey City Theater Center, in May, I'm going to be performing a play that I wrote.

It's basically about my musical experiences.

They've described it as an opera cabaret.

So we start at the beginning, and then we move into what I'm doing now.

I don't wanna give too much away, but basically opera encompasses all art forms, right?

And I wanna do that with pop music as well.

I wanna have dancers, there's going to be visual artists, there's gonna be screen projections, it's gonna be interactive with the audience.

And I think it's important to bring out Jersey artists to this show.

So I think right now we have something like 30 performers, participants in the show.

So I'm very excited about it.

And if it does well, we wanna put it on even bigger and better again at the end of the summer.

So please come out.

I think it'll be a really good time.

I just started writing plays, and this is my first one.

Yeah, so I'm very excited.

- Tell me about another passion of yours, and philanthropically.

I know it's touched my family, and I know it's touched your family, Alzheimer's.

Tell me what you do with the Alzheimer organization.

- Yeah, so my abuela was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

And she was diagnosed later than when I think she was actually experiencing symptoms.

But my family didn't know.

I didn't even know what the term, like, caregiver was.

She just lived with us.

And there were signs that I wish we would've known about.

I wish we could have had the support that Alzheimer's New Jersey has.

And so when she passed away, I had already written a song about her, but it's kinda like when they're there, you're already losing them, you're already saying your goodbyes, as you know, because you feel like even though they're with you, they're not.

So I wrote this song, and then Celeste, my best friend, manager, all things, she reached out to Alzheimer's New Jersey because I was in a different place.

And we did this video.

And they said, "Hey, we can help.

"Let's see how we can bring the word to people "and let people know that there is help out there."

Not just for the person with Alzheimer's, but for caregivers.

So we started going to all these conventions and meeting people, and it was really cathartic, but it was incredibly sad.

Just meeting how many people are affected by this.

We started doing tours at colleges and schools.

And I just asked, the first one I did, I said, "Who in the room knows someone who has it "or is close to someone?"

And every single person in the room raised their hand.

And these are 18 to 22 year olds, more or less.

And so, it's a big issue.

And so I wanna spread the word, do as much as I can.

We go to the walks.

It's a great organization that I'm very lucky to be working with.

And they've helped me out a lot.

I think I would've been in that hole a little longer.

I think helping others helped me kind of get out of it a little sooner.

But I'm very passionate about working with Alzheimer's New Jersey.

- Many of our viewers are Latina, and they're business people, all walks of life.

- Love it.

- What are some words of wisdom that you would give them based on your career and the hurdles you've overcome?

- Yeah, I would say you're only one step, one decision away from that next big move.

And even when you feel like, okay, all these little decisions, what are they adding up to?

You never know what decision is gonna open up a door.

And that's what I have to keep reminding myself, honestly, 'cause I'm not perfect either.

I have my ups and downs.

But connecting with people, having real connections, and just don't give up.

That's really the thing.

The person next to you, the only difference where they are is that they didn't give up.

When I sang opera, I did not think I would be writing pop music.

I did not think I would be in this path.

So I did not think I would be putting on a play.

I did not think, after I quit singing opera, that I would go back to it in a play.

Like, you don't know, you know nothing.

And that's another thing you.

You really don't know.

I don't know.

Do you feel like you know, you have the answers to a lot of things?

- Sometimes.

- Sometimes?

Okay, you're more confident than I am then.

(laughs) - It's a process.

- It's a process.

- It's a process, definitely.

Thank you for joining "Que Pasa."

I wish you much success.

- Thank you, it was such a pleasure.

Thank you for having Celia here with us.

- Our Madrina.

- Yes, it's amazing.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, thank you.

- Thank you so much, Giselle.

And up next we have Maria Trusa, founder of the social movement, Yo Digo No Más.

(upbeat salsa music) Welcome back.

And our next guest is the founder of the social movement Yo Digo No Más, Maria Trusa.

Welcome to "Que Pasa!"

- Carlos, thank you for having me here.

It's an honor to be with you.

- Thank you.

Tell me a little bit about your immigration story from the Dominican Republic.

- So, I had an interesting, well there's many interesting immigration story.

I believe each one of them is.

I was 15 years old when I came to the United States.

And could not speak English at all.

That was the biggest challenge.

You leave the DR.

I love the Dominican Republic, even though the first decades of my life in the Dominican Republic was quite challenging and very traumatic.

But coming to the United States, I did have this feeling that I was gonna do something big.

I remember when the doors of JFK opened up.

It was the first time that I saw doors that actually opened without you having to open it!

And I felt that I came to the land of opportunities, and not really realizing what I was going to end up doing, but definitely extremely excited to be in the United States with my family.

My mom was here.

She started moving mountains, and she taught us how to move mountains.

And the first mountain that she moved was to leave her children and be able to come to the United States to try to bring us all.

And it was a process that took time, and it was a painful process, but we were able to unite here eventually and create a beautiful life.

- And tell me, you worked many years at the Scarsdale Medical Group.

Tell me about that experience and what brought you into the medical field.

- I always wanted to be a doctor.

In my family, there's many doctors, so that was my childhood dream.

But I got married when I was 17.

I got married to a Dominican man, machista.

(Carlos chuckles) But I'm not saying that all Dominican or Spanish men are machistas, because that's not true, but I just happened to marry one.

And I had a child the age of 20, and I realized that dream of going to medical school was not gonna happen, so I became a medical assistant.

And as a medical assistant, I took an opportunity at Scarsdale Medical Group.

So I'm dealing with a wealthy community, and I created a career at Scarsdale Medical Group as a medical assistant.

I went to medical assistant school, then became a medical assistant.

And believe it or not, four years later, I was the executive director, and I had a career of 26 years at Scarsdale Medical Group.

- Amazing.

And fast forward to today, you're the CEO of Forme Medical Group?

- Yeah, CEO of Forme Medical Center and Urgent Care.

And I decided, after 26 years of having an amazing job, that I was going to focus on bringing healthcare to the uninsured community, especially the immigrant community.

Unfortunately in the United States, our immigrant community, if you're not legal, you're not going to get health insurance, even if you can afford it.

So my main focus was how do I bring dignified care and culturally sensitive medical care to this community?

So bilingual, everybody speaks Spanish.

Currently I have over 30,000 patients.

- Wow.

- It's a medical center, we have internal medicine, gynecology, podiatry, neurology, and we also have an urgent care.

And I can tell you, during the pandemic we ended up doing over 100,000 COVID testing.

And I feel extremely blessed that I had that opportunity to show up for our Latino community during tough times.

- Tell me about your movement, Yo Digo No Más, I Say No More?

- I Say No More.

- No more.

- Yo Digo No Más is, I would say, my legacy.

It is a movement that brings awareness to what I call this silent pandemic of sexual abuse of our children.

Sexual abuse of the children is something that has been normalized.

And I realized, as a survivor myself, when I mentioned to you, I had a traumatic childhood, when at the age of nine, my father, who was supposed to be my protector, decided to give me to his friend.

He destroyed my body, destroyed my soul, took away my innocence.

And that led into decades and decades of destruction.

But I had a child at the age of 20, as I mentioned, and that child became my accelerator to realize that I was so broken, so broken, and that I needed to stop this generational trauma that is passed along to our families, and that I was gonna stop it.

And I started this journey of healing and becoming very aware of what I was feeling, and finding ways of dealing with it.

I was very poor, but it is the ability of someone like me that was destroyed, that was a victim, and I became a survivor.

Not only a survivor, but I became a creator.

So the movement came out of my book, "Yo Digo No Más," "I Say No More."

It is in Spanish and English, and it's also in Audible.

And I decided to break the silence of my sexual abuse experience.

And my son was the one, one of my son asked me, "Mom, please, tell your story.

"Because there is women and men that needs to hear it "and understand that "you don't have to be stuck in victim mode."

And the movement now is a movement that is bringing awareness.

We have a talk show, over 300,000 views in YouTube.

But the biggest thing that we're doing is we are bringing a curriculum to the school district that is going to be teaching children how to protect themselves from sexual abuse.

Because over 93% of the abuse happens at home.

Carlos, every nine minutes, a child is sexually abused in the United States.

Only 30% get reported.

That's why I call it the silent pandemic of sexual abuse.

We are also bringing a series of books.

We're gonna teach parents how to talk to their children about sex, about their parts.

And education is gonna bring prevention.

And we're bringing healing through people telling their story, breaking the silence.

This is not Maria Trusa's movement.

This is your movement.

This is our movement.

This silent pandemic needs to stop.

We need to stop from letting people abuse the children and taking their innocence, that God-given gift to them.

Because life becomes 10 times harder when your innocence gets stolen.

And we need to unite.

We need funding for the movement, so I urge you to please go to YoDigoNoMás.com and join us on this effort by donating a dollar.

It doesn't matter.

Whatever you can do, you wanna participate, let's join together.

I know together we could break the chains of sexual abuse that are destroying our families, Carlos.

- I understand you wear a lotta different hats.

You're not busy enough, but also as your health plan, of your health, mind and body, you do triathlons.

- Yes.

- So tell me a little bit about that.

- So I started taking on, I love taking care of my body.

My body's my temple.

Physical challenges that you put on yourself leads you into being able to create the life that you want.

It affects different pillars of your life.

I look at my life as pillars that I am creating harmony.

And if I can excel my body, then I'm excelling my mind, and it falls into the other pillars of my life.

- That's amazing.

- Limit crusher.

- Limit crusher.

Well, thanks for joining us.

You're an inspiration, and keep on crushing those limits, Maria!

- Carlos, thank you so much.

It's truly an honor.

- And up next we have Luis Alamo, owner of the Alamo Insurance Group.

(upbeat salsa music) Welcome back.

And up next we have Luis Alamo, founder of the Alamo Insurance Group.

Welcome to "Qua Pasa," Luis.

- Welcome.

- Tell me about your family's journey from Cuba to New Jersey.

- So, at just below four years old, I remember that day vividly.

I say it was an extra-sensory experience, leaving the island paradise and ultimately winding up in Newark, New Jersey.

And I say it was an extra-sensory experience because I woke up on my grandfather's farm, and then I was at Havana Airport, and I had my first flight, and we landed in Miami, which was similar to Cuba, palm trees, until they hit me with the polio shot.

Things weren't that much fun at that moment.

But I did have my first hot dog during processing at Freedom House in the Cuban Refugee Center in Miami, Florida.

- So what made the family come to New Jersey from Miami?

- I think dad wanted to flee the regime and wanted to pursue a greater opportunity for his family.

- Tell me about your first venture.

I know your dad was in the clothing industry, so you worked with dad.

It was a very popular store.

I remember shopping there as a child.

- My dad was a very good businessman with very strong entrepreneurial spirit.

His first job was at Miami Shoes on Bergenline Avenue where they provided him an opportunity.

They put bounty on shoes that weren't selling.

So after hours, my dad would tie up those shoes in twine and go door to door selling them.

I remember days my dad would come home with blood on his fingers from carrying the shoes.

That opportunity ultimately led for him to start selling clothes out of the house, which led to his establishing his own enterprise, Crisanto's Good Price in West Newark, New Jersey, on 54th and Madison, for those of you that may remember.

- And I remember in high school, tell me if you're comfortable talking about the tragedy that took your dad's life.

- I am, I am.

And I do appreciate you describing it as a tragedy, because my father's story is the story of the American dream until that day, the summer of '84, where he went into the market, as he did every day to shop for goods for the store.

And I went off to school.

And when I came home, my life had changed forever.

My dad had been kidnapped and later murdered.

It's a 45 year old unsolved crime.

- Wow, wow.

- So in our culture, not that I spent a lotta time worrying about my grades, Carlos, you know that, but I did dream about playing college sports.

But in our culture, my duty was to go and serve the family and work with mom.

So I did so.

- And you also did your own venture in Hoboken.

- We were a designer outlet store before outlet stores were popular.

And so it was a wholesale import export business, and then we had retail locations to sell the goods that we couldn't sell wholesale, export or otherwise sell wholesale.

- Like many folks on the show that have been on before, we often talk about, in businesses, the moment in their career where they had to pivot.

COVID has caused a lot of folks to pivot.

You pivoted from clothing retail into insurance.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Having spent my first career in retail and wholesale of fashion goods, I needed to reinvent myself.

I had opportunities in real estate, mortgage banking.

I had an opportunity on Wall Street that I wonder about sometimes.

But ultimately I chose insurance.

It's what best complimented what my friends were doing.

So I chose insurance.

They say insurance agents are the rock stars of business.

We are blessed with something called residual income.

So when I found out that every time my clients would pay premium, I would get paid premium, I was like, "Okay, I could do this."

(Carlos laughs) - And tell me about the growth of Alamo.

- You know, I have to tell you that, similar to my dad's beginning going door to door selling shoes, that was my beginning as well.

I started going door to door, one man show on Bergenline Avenue in beautiful Hudson County, New Jersey.

And within two years, I had established a book of business.

Today, Alamo, as you said, has a predominant position in the public sector.

I call us a sum total organization.

It's the collective talent, the experience, and competitive spirit of our small group of insurance professionals that allow us to compete against some of the world's largest brokerages.

- Tell me, what do you attribute some of the success to?

- So, the name is Alamo Insurance Group.

So I have a catchy name, right?

Alamo, there was a battle in 1836, and then there was a rental car company.

So it made sense to use Alamo, but it was always gonna be a group.

And I owe all our success to the group of professionals that have trusted me with their careers and have placed their license with the group.

And so it's all about the group.

- Luis, give us some words of wisdom for our young viewers or entrepreneurs who wanna have a career as successful as you had.

- Well, when I was in fashion and now in insurance, I'm a marketing guy.

Marketing is about sales.

I believe that you need to be persistent.

I believe it's a numbers game.

Do not be discouraged.

You're a baseball fan just as I am.

If you bat 300 in baseball, you got a shot of getting into the Hall of Fame.

So if you can sell three out of every 10 opportunities, you're doing good.

I say every no is a step closer to your next yes.

So persistence, set your goals high, and work hard.

- Thanks again.

I wish you much success, Luis, and thanks for joining "Que Pasa."

- Thank you very much.

Delighted to be here, and bless everyone that's watching and supporting the show.

- Ladies and gentlemen, that's a wrap.

Thank you for joining us for episode two of season four.

We had some really great storytellers and some serious topics, but it's that taking an adverse situation in your life and turning into a positive.

As Maria said, realizing I'm strong, I could do more, I could continue to push my limits.

That's the beauty of storytelling.

So I just love the diverse storytellers we've had on this month.

Thank you.

Send us ideas, if you wanna send stuff to info@quepasanj.org.

But always remember, que pasa!

- [Narrator] Funding for this episode of "Que Pasa NJ" with Carlos Medina has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

The Engineers Labor Employer Cooperative 825.

PSE&G, ROI-NJ Business Magazine.

Thanks to the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Find out more about our familia at shccnj.org.

This has been a production of the Modesto Educational Foundation.

(upbeat salsa music)