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A hand offered in kindness can alter the course of a life, says Anna Escobedo Cabral, who rose from the farm fields of California to become U.S. treasurer in the George W. Bush administration.
Speaking Friday at the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce annual convention in Salt Lake City, Escobedo Cabral recounted an unexpected turn of events when, at 16, she decided to quit high school to find a job that would help her parents feed their family.
A math teacher urged her to reconsider her plans. If she would agree to stay in school and go to college, he would speak to her parents, help her find scholarships, even fill out her application to the University of California.
"What happened in that one exchange, in this intervention, was that he changed the course of my life in a way that I never imagined. I had no idea that those doors existed that I could walk through if I got a decent education," Escobedo Cabral said.
Escobedo Cabral, 51, described the arc of her life to show her audience of Latinos in business that they can also make a difference to people conditioned by economic or other circumstances to believe their station in society is predetermined.
"I thought to myself as a university student that there is absolutely nothing special about me. Nothing," Escobedo Cabral said.
"But I was lucky enough to have been touched by a gentleman who took his job seriously, who was doing double-duty as a guidance counselor and an algebra teacher, to change the course of my life."
Escobedo Cabral entered the University of California at Santa Cruz and went on to graduate school at Harvard. A Democrat, she later accepted an offer from U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch to join his staff. Her job was to build relationships between lawmakers and the Latino community that might lead to better legislative policy.
Escobedo Cabral is now a lawyer and works in the external relations office of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. The bank makes loans in Latin American countries.
Also speaking at the convention was Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Palomarez outlined what his chamber does on behalf of Hispanic business groups and businesses, primarily in the areas of immigration reform, access to capital and insurance reform.
Noting that Latino purchasing power has increased from $212 billion to more than $1 trillion in the past decade, Palomarez said the fast-growing community is playing a major role in getting the country through the economic turndown.
"We are taking risks and starting new ventures every day; we are providing jobs; we are creating economic development; we are creating a tax base with our businesses, with our hard work," he said.
"We are not the problem. We are the solution."
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