There are many ways to be Latina. What is your favorite part about being Latina?
I think the diversity we identify with is my favorite part. Being from Mexico, I hear “you don’t look Mexican” all the time, and I think, what should I look like? People from Mexico come from many different backgrounds. We come in all sizes and colors. There’s a richness to being Latina.
What is your superpower?
I wish I had a superpower. I tend to have a lot of empathy with people. That allows me to understand people and contribute in meaningful ways to different partnerships.
Where is home?
That’s a tough one for me to answer. I live in New York City, but my husband is in Utah, so we go back and forth often. But I was born and raised in Guadalajara. My mom was half French and half Mexican, and my dad is from Guadalajara and has German roots. Coming from a family of immigrants in Mexico opened the world to me. My mom was also a doctor. My dad is trained in agriculture, and he always worked in organic agriculture, trying to find more sustainable ways of growing food. My brother studied biology, and my sister is a designer. We really are what we want to be. That’s how I grew up, having the freedom to be what I wanted to be.
You are now the Executive Director of the Tacombi Foundation. Tell us about the journey that led you there.
As I mentioned, I grew up with a lot of freedom, but I was the worst student in middle school, high school, and probably even college. I always wanted to do different things. I studied sociology because I was very curious. I wanted to understand society and people’s problems and be part of solutions. I worked in education for almost five years before coming to New York. When I arrived in New York, I didn’t have a work permit, so I signed up to volunteer in the nonprofit sector to support different organizations. Eventually, I was able to work, and I became the Executive Director of the Qualitas of Life Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission of providing financial literacy to the Hispanic immigrant community. That experience gave me knowledge in nonprofit management. It was also my door to so many other organizations, including Tacombi, where I am now.
You prioritized family for a period, which was also a part of your journey. Tell us about that time.
When my mom was very sick with cancer, I decided to step back from work and spend time with her. I left my position as Executive Director of the Qualitas of Life Foundation without knowing what was going to come next. Through those months, I connected with the CEO of Tacombi, who I’d previously met, and we started to discuss what was next for me. At the time, he wanted to build the company’s foundation, and in 2019, I joined him to do so. Initially I held the chief of staff role and was a type of advisor to the CEO and leader of special projects. Then, I was director of impact and culture at the company while I was building the foundation, until finally I started focusing 100% of my time on the Tacombi Foundation.
Tell us more about the Foundation and the work you all do.
The Tacombi Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the company. It is a nonprofit organization that aims to advance the Mexican community through food accessibility, education, and employment training. And we do that by leveraging the Tacombi infrastructure and network to align it with the company’s expansion and growth. We can, at the same time, grow our impact through the organization.
With food at the center of things the Tacombi Foundation has really positioned itself to be a reliable support in different communities. How has that worked?
Food is definitely at the center. We are part of the restaurant industry. But we live in a food system that is broken. Almost 35 million people in the U.S. struggle with food insecurity. Restaurants play or could play a role in fixing that, and we knew at Tacombi we needed to focus on this. Right now, we have 20 taquerias, in six different cities, and we took a look at the extra capacity that each of our restaurants and each of our kitchens had to be able to produce meals to provide to people facing food insecurity. We also had a network of vendors with whom we could leverage and invite to get involved. We began during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we knew that we were committed to doing this long-term, and we had the infrastructure in place in the way that the Tacombi Foundation is set up. Our community kitchen program now provides over 10,000 meals weekly to communities in need. We have a network of about 50 community partners that allow us to reach the communities we aim to reach. We also take a lot of pride in this food being culturally relevant for the community that we’re serving and it having the same quality, careful preparations, and being served with dignity as the food we serve all of our guests.
Susana, it really appears that your team at the Tacombi Foundation is at the forefront of this. Is that the case? The only other organization I can think of doing something similar is Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen. How are you guys different, and what does the field look like domestically?
I hope that we can be the benchmark. I don’t know any other restaurant chain doing something like what we’re doing in terms of the volume, impact, and the way we’re doing it. I think the main difference with Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen is that their focus is on emergency food relief. In contrast, we are providing food accessibility to people facing hunger and food insecurity in a systematic way. Many people, especially around the holidays, ask me if there’s anything special we are doing, and whether they can volunteer and give back. I say everything is appreciated. However, let’s keep in mind that people eat every day, multiple times a day. So, our program commits to providing meals every week to the same organization so they can distribute the food regularly and consistently. Once we commit to an organization, we give them hundreds of meals on the same days, the same number of meals every single week, over and over again. This way, these families can at least rely on quality meals to bring home and focus on something else — like finding a job, spending time with their kids, or using the money that they’ve saved on medicine, transportation or other necessities.
Who is someone else we should feature on Informada?
Alida Boer. She’s a friend of mine, she was Miss Guatemala in 2007 and then became an entrepreneur. One of her brands is Maria’s Bag, a line of bags and clothing that honors the artisanal traditions of women in Guatemala. Her second brand is Nolé, a line of bar shampoos that are environmentally friendly, which I absolutely love and use myself. On the nonprofit side there’s 3 women who are my heroes — Nilbia Coyote, the Executive Director of a Queens-based organization that works with labor workers called New Immigrant Community Empowerment. Lorena Kourousias, the Executive Director of Mixtecas, an immigrant-women-led organization looking at innovative ways to meet community needs. Lastly, is Yesenia Mata who leads La Colmena, an organization in Staten Island that empowers immigrant communities.