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Leading Others to
Lead
Juana
Bordas has dedicated her career to creating a nation
of Latina leaders
The Mestiza Leadership Institute in Boulder, Co.,
has made a name for itself since its inception in
1995 as the consulting firm to turn to for tapping
into the benefits of multicultural leadership.
Behind it all is an exceptional woman who learned at
an early age that servant leadership, a lifetime
dedicated to helping and giving back to the
community, was her calling in life.
Juana Bordas has taken many turns in her
professional life. She was a Peace Corps volunteer
in Chile, founded Mi Casa Resource Center for Women
in Denver, Co., and now heads Mestiza and several
successful non-profit programs. Her ambition and
passion were borne out of her experience as the
daughter of immigrants, which marked her as
different from her peers. Even at a young age,
Bordas realized the importance of being part of a
collaborative, supportive group.
“I had a real inferiority complex as a child. My
parents spoke broken English, we were poor, I was
small and dark — a lot of things were going on,”
recalls Bordas, whose parents immigrated to Florida
from Nicaragua before she was born. “The thing that
was an anchor for me was that even as a young girl I
understood that girls help each other. For everyone,
there’s a network of people that support you and
surround you.”
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Bordas with her
comadres. Clockwise from top left: Sister
Alicia Cuaron, Dr. Cleo Molina, Dr.
Jeannette Rodriguez, Sylvia Puente, Bordas,
and the Honorable Debbie Ortega. Photos
courtesty of Juana Bordas. |
Bordas has dedicated her career to creating a
network of Latinos reaching into the highest
echelons of corporate America. She has been at the
forefront of diversity leadership issues since she
became the first Latina faculty member at the Center
for Creative Leadership, an elite center for
training top-notch executives; it was that
experience that inspired her to create a consulting
center geared specifically toward the needs of the
Latino communities.
“I got the idea that what we needed in our community
was the training, because the real missing piece in
that top level of trained leaders is the Latino
piece,” she says.
Bordas went on to make her mark as the founding
president and CEO of the National Hispana Leadership
Institute, now located in Arlington, Va., and then
founded Mestiza Leadership International in 1995.
Mestiza, the Spanish word for people of Native
American and European heritage, seemed a perfect
name for Bordas’ new endeavor, which specializes in
training and developing a work environment that
encourages diversity and effective leadership.
“[Mestiza] signifies that Latinos are mixtures, and
that we are so diverse that we can become a model
for the whole world,” she says. “Sometimes people
don’t understand what the word means, but it doesn’t
bother me because I’m working for posterity here!”
Bordas’ vision of her legacy led her to create her
non-profit venture, the Institute for Mestiza
Leadership, three years ago. Under the umbrella of
the Institute, Bordas created a training program
called the Circle of Latina Leadership.
Approximately 70 women between the ages of 22 and 45
have been through the program to date. It has been
so successful that Bordas created another program,
Compañeras, a community-oriented extension of the
Circle. In Compañeras, women who’ve been trained in
the Circle give back to the community by mentoring
12-year-old girls. Bordas dreams that these young
women will grow up to become Latina leaders in their
own right and, in turn, to become compañeras
(companions) and mentors themselves.
Compañeras also features a distinctly Latina twist:
The young women being mentored are invited into the
mentors’ homes, and the mentor is invited into the
mentoring subject’s home. “Part of our view is the
thought that our advancement is pretty empty if it
doesn’t involve la familia, the family,” Bordas
says. “We believe that our young people need to know
their roots, their mentors, the ones who have passed
on before us.”
Bordas seems to be in her element when she’s
multitasking and juggling her considerable roster of
programs, the publishing of her first book, her
speaking tours, and life as a mother to three adult
daughters: Chela, a lawyer; Carmen, a bilingual
teacher; and Paloma, a student.
Bordas’ first book is tentatively entitled “The
Tribe of Many Colors: Leadership for American
Democracy,” and could be published as soon as the
spring of 2005. It tackles the integration of the
leadership practices of people of color within the
American democracy.
“Leadership is moving toward collective, or
team-based, leadership, or reciprocal leadership,”
Bordas said. “So my book takes a look at the
different dynamics in each community [of color],
examines how they lead, and presents the thesis that
until we integrate the practices of all our people
into democracy and into organizational structures,
one cannot have democracy.”
Another of Bordas’ projects is the Latino Leadership
Development Program, a five-day intensive training
session she founded in 2002 through Mestiza
Leadership International. The program has been
tailored expressly for Latinos at the executive
level.
“What we teach you is: How do Latinos approach
corporations to sell our endeavors? How do we market
ourselves? Where is the great Latino advantage? What
is it we have to offer?” she says. “We have to
develop leaders that are very strategic and that
have to promote change. We have to promote leaders
with corazón.”
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Juana Bordas (far
right) with her daughters (from left)
Carmen, Paloma and Chela. |
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Tapping into the Latino advantage, Bordas says,
strengthens the Latino network at the top and
creates a greater network of mentors.
If Latinas cannot tap into a network, Bordas
counsels them to set up the network on their own and
abolish the stereotype of the old boys’ network as
the prototype for the mentoring system. “For a young
Latina that doesn’t have a mentor, I say, ask
someone!” she urges. “Don’t forget that even the
people around you, your peers, your comadres, are
possible mentors. We get this idea that a mentor has
to be a certain type of person, and they don’t.”
Bordas’ uplifting vision and her devotion to the
Latina community earned her an induction into the
Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1997, a Wise Woman
Award from the National Center for Women’s Policy
Studies and the Franklin Miller Award from the
United States Peace Corps. Bordas has a reputation
as the person to turn to for countless corporations
interested in maximizing the strengths of a diverse
workforce.
“Latinas are starting businesses faster, getting
into Congress and politics overall faster, and have
so many qualities that are attractive to the
dominant culture,” Bordas says. “The groundwork
really has been laid. The opportunities are pretty
wide open today, although there’s still a lot of
bias and a lot that we have to do.”
Bordas’ vision for the future is one that will
forever involve her devoting her time and energy to
her ideal of servant leadership.
“I believe I’m going to do my best work in my ’80s!
The thing I take away is that to be involved and to
help people is very joyous,” she says. “It’s fun! I
have such a hard time understanding why people don’t
get involved.”
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