- [Announcer] Funding for this episode of "¿Qué 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.

- Welcome back and happy Hispanic Heritage Month.

On this episode of "¿Qué Pasa?"

we'll hear from Assemblywoman Carmen Theresa Morales, leader and advocate Elisa Charters, and newly appointed Senator George Helmy.

They'll share their journeys and the impactful work they're doing for New Jersey, from educating the community to advocacy and public service.

Let's get started.

(upbeat salsa music) Our first guest is New Jersey's 34th District Assemblywoman Carmen Theresa Morales.

She's the first Puerto Rican assemblywoman in Essex County, and also serves as the director of curriculum and instruction for Essex County Schools of Technology.

Bienvenida to "¿Qué Pasa?

", Assemblywoman.

- Thank you.

- So we're in the midst of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Can you tell me what being Hispanic means to you, Assemblywoman?

- Well, number one, I'm an educator at heart.

- Okay.

- So for me, when I think about Hispanic Heritage Month, it's really about ensuring that our young people know their history, know that we are celebrating hispanos and our ancestors who have come before us and have made such a huge contribution to this country.

And I'm not talking about our, you know, soldiers, you know, that have fought the war to ensure our freedom.

That's important, that's critical.

But it's also about celebrating our hispanos, our leaders, that have done so much for our communities.

So for me, celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month is empowering our youth to not only know their history, but to build on those legacies that so many of our ancestors that have come before us have done.

- You've had a good year.

First Puerto Rican assemblyperson from Essex County.

That's really hard to believe, honestly.

- You know what?

It actually is.

- You just got your master's, first in your family to go to college, and you're pursuing your doctorate now.

Congratulations.

- Thank you.

- Impressive Latina.

- Being the first to go to college to pursue higher education in my family, it is a huge honor.

But you know what so many of first generation college students recognize is that when we step foot onto these college campuses, we step foot with no background, no previous resources, because our families don't know what that's like.

So we're really paving the path for the next generations that follow us because we had to learn how to navigate and find those resources for us on campus for the first time.

Proud to say that I am pursuing my doctorate.

Of course, again, first in my family, but it is a tough journey and it is one that I'm still trying to figure out how to balance in my life along with being a director of curriculum and instruction at a high school, but also assemblywoman.

But that role and that space in higher education for myself, I'm still learning to navigate and it's not easy.

- And you mentioned paving a path and you mentioned your position at the Schools of Technology, 22 years as an educator.

If you could give us one challenge that you were faced with and you were able to overcome.

- So one of the most challenging parts of me being a school leader was when COVID happened.

When COVID happened, there wasn't a playbook.

We had to find the means of supporting each other as school leaders, but also finding what resources that we can bring to our school districts.

And what we found was how many school leaders came together.

We ended up coming together to share the resources that we were doing during that time because we didn't learn how to deal with a pandemic in schools, right?

We go and we take this school leader exam.

We have to pass this exam.

We have to go through a mentorship program.

But during a mentorship program, they don't speak about pandemics.

They don't speak about these issues that may arise and so we have to find and navigate through those resources together.

I believe that was one of my most difficult times being a school leader, but it was the most rewarding time because I was able not to live in my silos of being in my school and just working with my staff.

It was more about, "How do we come together as a school community, as school leaders, to share our resources so that we can provide the support that our students need?"

Because as you know, during that time, you know, there were families who couldn't even have access to technology.

Children were at home, sitting at home not learning and the gap, especially in urban communities, widened.

So now we're here trying to close this achievement gap that was left behind due to the pandemic.

So for me, that was one of the biggest challenges that I had to face as a school leader.

- Moving to your role in the assembly.

I know substance abuse, addiction are topics that are very important to you.

Tell me about the task force that you formed in the Assembly.

- This actually came about because the State Commission of Investigation, they released this report called the "Dirty Business of Getting Clean."

And what this report ultimately did was it gave recommendations on what was happening in the sober homes and addiction facilities.

Basically, there was fraudulent and unethical practices that was in every part of the process for the addiction recovery process.

We always have bad actors, right?

These bad actors were more concerned about building and making a profit and less concerned about these clients that needed to get better, that needed to stay clean and continue to be sober.

That's what these facilities are there for, right, is to help those who need it the most so that they can recover, so that they can stay sober.

But when we find that there are bad actors that are taking advantage of these people, we in the state of New Jersey need to do better.

So based on this report, over 10 pieces of legislation came out of these recommendations, and that's really what we're doing is to do those checks and balances based on these recommendations.

- Assemblywoman, as a Latina role model, you're in education and you have a second job as an assemblyperson.

What words of wisdom or advice can you tell our Latina viewers who are also juggling multiple jobs, career, family?

You know, how are you doing it and how are you doing it so successfully?

- Well, coming from a Latino home, right, we know that family's everything.

We know that when you have the support of your familia, that anything is possible.

And that's what I have.

Ultimately, we have to find that support.

I'm making it because I find my circle of friends.

I find my circle of supporters that will step in when I need to.

So if I need to focus on my dissertation, for example, I'll call on my sorority sisters who went through it.

So it's about finding your circle and ensuring that you have that support so that you can do the things that you need to do and not feel guilty about it.

- That's beautiful.

Thank you for joining us and keep doing the great work - Thank you.

- that you're doing, Assemblywoman.

- Thank you so much.

This was great.

(chuckles) (upbeat salsa music) - This next segment is brought to you by Wells Fargo Bank.

Thank you, Wells Fargo.

Our next guest, Elisa Charters, wears many hats as a leader and advocate for empowerment and inclusion.

She's the co-founder and president of Latina Surge, a national nonprofit helping Latinas.

Welcome to the show, Elisa.

- Thank you, Carlos.

- So as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, tell me what our culture, our traditions, what Hispanic Heritage Month means to you.

- It means so many things, but you know, if I really think deep inside of my memory, it's all about spending time with my grandmother, my abuelita in Peru, where she would make me soup for lunch and she would cook for me and, you know, just spending that quality time with her in Peru, just being immersed in the culture of my mother's country.

- As somebody, you were the first in your family to go to college.

- You know, I'm really grateful to New Jersey Institute of Technology because I remember being in high school, and I was pretty good in science and math, but I had no idea about what the opportunities were for me.

I had no idea if I would be going to college.

My father ran his own business and my mother helped him in his small business.

Then someone from NJIT came in one day to talk about engineering and it sort of opened up a world and I applied and I couldn't believe that I got in.

And I was always very much into sports.

You're accepted in sports.

No matter what you look like, you have to perform, and if you perform, you're accepted.

I wound up playing four sports in college, believe it or not.

- Wow, I love it.

- Three were varsity sports.

I played four years of tennis, two years of softball, two years of basketball, and I skied on the ski team.

- Amazing, - It was a club team, but it was competitive.

- amazing, sure.

- I didn't like to study much.

(both laugh) - Very impressive.

So I don't like to look at my notes, but since you have so many organizations that you've been involved with, Latino Surge, Ahgua Tech and BEADEI, tell me a little bit about those organizations.

- So Latina Surge actually is an extension of the service that I did with the Junior League of Montclair Newark.

It was a grassroots organization that I co-founded with two other colleagues.

And basically, what we found was we needed an organization to focus on multicultural women and access inclusion opportunities for Latinas, African American women, women in general.

Through the Junior League of Montclair Newark, you know, it's a long-standing organization which served women at risk, children at risk throughout Essex County.

And I just realized that a lot of those community members were Latinos and so it just made sense to expand it and concentrate the service towards our Latino community.

And it has since grown into a national organization.

I had a friend who worked for Facebook, and Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook at the time, she wrote the book "Lean In," and started an organization around that for women's empowerment.

And my friends said, "Why don't you get Latina Surge on that platform?"

And I said, "I don't know anything about it, but I'll look into it," and I did, and Lean In now has 100,000 circles globally.

- Wow, wow.

- We joined when there was only, I believe, 33,000, but Latina Surge is in the top 100 networks - Amazing.

- and we're invited out to Palo Alto every year for a leadership training through the Lean In organization.

- I love it.

- So we're able to amplify our impact because there's so much research through the McKinsey study on women in the workplace, and we're able to utilize that information and share it and ensure that Latinas and other multicultural women are aware of the information that impacts them.

- Talking about Latinas, you're a graduate of a program, LETS, Latinas Entrepreneurship Training Series, and you're also on the board of the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Tell me a little bit about the LETS program, which Wells Fargo generously supports.

How do you feel that program impacted your business?

- Yes, and thank you to Wells Fargo because the program's amazing.

I have to say, we just talked about the fact that, you know, I was the first to go to college in my family, and NJIT gave me that opportunity.

And I bring this up because it was another stepping stone.

I wound up going to Columbia University, an Ivy League institution, getting a degree there.

None of this would've been possible without, like, these educational opportunity programs.

And LETS is another opportunity program.

Attending the LETS program opened my world.

I never had that kind of exposure about being an entrepreneur and how to really start my own business and follow this, like, methodology of being successful.

And Ahgua Tech, you mentioned, that's not a nonprofit.

That's a for-profit company that I have.

We serve firefighters with specialized laundry equipment to help them wash off carcinogens off their turnout gear.

It's very specialized equipment.

And that company has grown since I've done the LETS program and it was all because of the skills I learned through the LETS program.

- They also helped you incubate a new organization, a new company called Juego.Juegos.

Tell me a little bit, - Yes.

- something about that.

I'm really, really excited about Juego.Juegos.

It's a social scheduling app.

If we think about texting, you know, it's actually antiquated.

When we text each other, we're sharing some kind of information.

It's some kind of digital asset, right?

It's a font, which is sentences.

It could be a picture, a video, a link.

But we really can't interact with it, right?

We can just share it.

So we have come up with an innovation where it's a digital asset that you can actually interact with in messaging platforms so that it can cut down on inefficient texting.

And so this digital asset will really cut down on all that in inefficient communication.

So we're really excited about this innovation.

- What's the website?

We'll put it on the screen.

- juego.juegos, that's it.

- Excellent.

Last question, as a Latina role model, give us some words of wisdom to our Latina viewers who are perhaps juggling and wondering how you're doing it and how you did it and how you continue to do it.

- At the end of the day, I think it's about passion.

It's probably part of being Latina.

I'm very passionate.

I go to sleep thinking about women's empowerment.

I wake up thinking about women's empowerment.

Sometimes three o'clock in the morning, I get an idea and I'm like, "I have to do this."

But that's one thing that I love about our Latina Surge nonprofit as well.

We understand that things in people's lives happen.

And especially for Latinas, we're juggling so much.

So we always give the latitude for people to come in and come out because someone might be having a child, somebody might have a new career opportunity, someone might be, you know, continuing their education.

We have to always think about sort of not feeling guilty about doing it all.

We're sort of taught that we should be doing it all, but sometimes you can't do it all and you have to give yourself that space.

- Thank you for joining us, and keep empowering, Elisa.

- Thank you.

- This last segment was brought to you by Wells Fargo Bank.

Thank you for hosting the small business segment.

(upbeat salsa music) Our final guest is Senator George Helmy, appointed by Governor Murphy to complete Senator Bob Menendez's term.

He's the first Coptic Christian and sixth Arab American in the Senate.

George serves on the Finance, Housing, and Urban Affairs committees.

Welcome to "¿Qué Pasa?"

George.

- So great to be with you, Carlos, - Longest serving chief of staff to a governor in New Jersey history.

Tell me how that experience and also working for Senator Lautenberg and Senator Booker, how that's positioned you to take this position as senator and be a caretaker for New Jersey for the next X amount of months.

- Look, it starts from... You know, we're in Jersey City.

It starts from being back home and coming up in this diverse and rich community and being the son of immigrants and understanding what public policy and governance meant to our communities.

And then coming up in public policy and public service with Senator Lautenberg and Senator Booker allowed me to really understand the host of federal issues and how they're impacted, whether it be our infrastructure, our schools, our abilities to climb the ladders of opportunity.

And then when I was able and so fortunate to work for Governor Murphy, who had a great vision for equality and equity and, you know, wanted to break apart what I call the consolidation of opportunity, you know, based on regressive tax policies or regressive policies that consolidated wealth and opportunity in certain sectors of our economy or certain sectors of the individuals or earners.

You know, and when the unfortunate opportunity, I do call it an unfortunate opportunity where the vacancy was created, having both that federal experience, understanding the state issues, knowing the institution of the Senate really has allowed me so far to kind of really jump in.

I'm really proud of the amount of work we've done and what that work has already meant to elevating the issues that are really important to New Jerseyans as a whole, but I would say specifically, the communities that, you know, you and I have grown up in.

- A son of immigrants and first Coptic Christian in Senate.

How does that feel?

I mean, one of 100 and the first ever to represent that very important population here in Jersey, especially.

- When the governor afforded me this just incredible honor and opportunity to, you know, put this cap on my public service career and re-engage in the halls of the Senate, not only as a staffer, but now as the senator, the outpouring of support from people who we don't know, who don't know my parents, and just the outpouring from Egypt and from Muslim and Coptic communities about what this meant to them to see one of their own, whether it be for a day or for three months or longer represented, that part was really emotional to me, that you saw generations before me and the generations after me in the Coptic and Muslim, Egyptian and Arab communities coming out and just elevating what this meant.

It it was deeply emotional and a great sense of personal pride.

- I'd like to talk briefly about Senator Menendez, whose seat you are currently occupying, for better or worse, an amazing impact in the Hispanic community here in Jersey and nationally, and also somebody who really held businesses' feet to the fire to push for diversity.

So how do you feel taking that seat, a person who was a legend for the body of work that he did, and certainly there's other issues, legal issues, that you could or could not speak about.

But just tell me that experience, stepping into the seat and having the weight of the impact and the love that he has for the Hispanic community and how your interaction you feel.

I know you've made some good hires already in the Hispanic community, so kudos on you for acknowledging and being ready for that.

- I think the way you phrased the question is perfect.

I think we have to separate the legal issues that the senator has faced and is facing from the work that he accomplished and his legacy as a leader in that institution.

As it relates to Senator Menendez's body of work and taking on his legacy, whether I had 100 days or 100 years, you cannot think you're going to have the level of impact he had, frankly, on all issues because he was a lion of a legislator.

And again, that's not to involve myself or take an opinion on the legal matter, but it'd be totally inappropriate as someone who worked very closely with him and his team during my time with Senator Lautenberg, who was his senior senator and Senator Booker who was his junior senator, I had to see him up close.

His legacy as it relates to the Latino community is one that I think is unmatchable.

He was so focused on issues of equality, on opportunities in careers, as you mentioned, board appointments.

But again, how do you take that young man or woman and get them on a career path so that we're not talking about simply the minimum wage, which is wildly important, but how do you take a young man or young woman from Jersey City that we're in now or the other communities and give them a glide path to a career and break sort of the cycle of generational poverty.

I've been so fortunate to step in.

What I have done, and I will tell you, Carlos, I think about his legacy and, as you mentioned, I've taken on a great deal of his team, including the diversity that he reflected in his team.

And I did that when I was with Senator Booker and Governor Murphy as well, is make sure that the senior team reflected the diversity of New Jersey.

But what I've already done in Foreign Affairs is talk about the importance in the countries of NGOs and journalists and making sure that we are, as the United States, being very thoughtful about how we are approaching countries who seem to quelch democracy or to clamp down on journalism, and that's incredibly important to our communities.

To fight for equity in our tax structure so that the highest earners are paying more.

And lastly, to fight for benefits for New Jersey and that Senator Menendez was key on, including his key appropriations, which I'm going to fight very strongly to ensure that his, not mine, but Senator Menendez's appropriations remain in the future appropriation bills.

- We're here in Hispanic Heritage Month.

How do you feel you will interact with an institution like the Statewide Hispanic Chamber as an example?

- There's so much spend coming out of our government entities, whether it be local governments, state government, or the federal government.

And how do we ensure that there aren't barriers put up, because there are, barriers put up whether they be insurance or bonding requirements and otherwise, that inhibit minority-owned businesses from entry.

And so that has been something I've worked on, whether it be through the state disparity study and have continued to already have these conversations with colleagues about, "Hey, how do we have more conversations about minority and women and veteran-owned businesses getting more into our supply chain so that they know the opportunities well in advance and can go through whatever process they need to be to be eligible when the RFP or RFQ comes out?"

You know, we always talk, Carlos, about we are all in the relationship business, whether you are selling supply chains and logistics or you're selling microchips.

We are in the relationship business.

And I think what you and John and others have done is allow for these relationships to allow for the facilitation of these important conversations, which much of the success that we have seen, at least in the New Jersey, New York area, is attributable to a real focus in the relationships that matter, getting that done.

And you just need to be thoughtful and go ahead and implement.

What you say, you have to be able to do.

- Last question, with us being right here in the midst of Hispanic Heritage Month, any special events planned at the Senate?

Do you have any programs you'd like to highlight?

- From a state's office facility, and we're proud of this, we're gonna be doing a number of events to highlight the culture, the heritage, and the impact of New Jersey.

I'm very big, as you know, on highlighting the impact of members of certain communities on the communities, so that it's not just a historical look back, but these are folks like yourself, Carlos, you know, who are having an impact today.

You know, my father likes to talk about leaving our legacy in the ground, and what that means is the seeds that we plant will lead to trees whose shade we'll never sit under, right?

It's something like that.

And I wanna highlight those individuals today who are putting the seeds down that'll be the trees for the next generation.

And in the Senate, and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but Senator Menendez was usually the prime sponsor of the resolution that honored this.

You know, I do see myself continuing his legislative legacy, understanding as an Arab American, I probably won't be the prime, but I do intend on carrying on his legacy, which is very important to New Jersey by elevating that issue in the Senate.

- Thank you, Senator.

You're making us very proud and I love hearing how your dad is so proud of you and you continue to repeat his words.

- I appreciate that, Carlos.

Thank you.

- Thanks for joining us.

Another great episode.

Be sure to catch up on all of our episodes on pbs.org and follow us on social media.

Remember, "¿Qué Pasa?

New Jersey" airs on the second Saturday of every month at 9:00 AM on PBS.

Nos vemos.

- [Announcer] Funding for this episode of "¿Qué 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)