Lesley Mireya Reith

Might comes in small Latina package

"Cant it upriver."

"Gunnel!"

Lesley Mireya Reith

Date and place of birth: July 4, 1979, Wisconsin

When I was a kid, my heroes were my mom and dad. School was not easy in those early years, and they set the tone for everything. Kids are mean, and they told me that the best revenge was to prove them that they were wrong (about me).

Fantasy dinner guests: President Obama because of what he represents, and Michelle Obama, so I could learn about how they made it; Pope Francis because he’s a pope who’s about the people and fights hierarchy; Dolores Huerta, because I stand on her shoulders, it was all men [making a difference] in her time but she was among them; Malala Yousafzai, for her maturity, insight, strength and because I’d like to learn more about what inspired her; Madeline Albright, who was actually the president of the National Democratic Institute, which I was a part of. I admire her on many levels but as a fellow single woman and also, I would love to check out her pen collection.

Movies I’ve watched the most: Sleepless in Seattle, Shall We Dance, Pretty Woman, and most recently Frozen.

My most recent read: David Floth, which was about Obama’s race and currently I’m reading a J.K. Rowling mystery, which I’ve enjoyed for the strong female lead.

A fashion trend I never fell victim to: I tried most things. One I regret is doing the Jennifer Aniston bob with my curly hair.

If I had an extra hour in the day, I would dance. I love Latin and salsa dancing, ballroom dancing and Zumba.

What’s always by my bed: an alarm clock. I wish I could say I was one of those people who naturally got up in the morning, but I need help doing it.

Something you may not know about me: I’m a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan. My family and I own stock in the team.

"Way enough."

Lesley Mireya Reith issued the commands from the front of the boat as the Columbia University men's crew team did exactly as she said.

Coxswain is a tricky job, one that requires a heavy dose of confidence and the ability to remain calm in high pressure situations. They can change the outcome of a race and so can be subject to a lot of criticism.

Chosen because she has a "big voice for such a little person," Reith, who is a petite Latina woman, found her confidence directing the actions of tall white guys.

You could say she still does that as executive director of Arkansas United Community Coalition. She empowers immigrants through leadership, connects them to elected leaders and educates both sides -- delegation and public -- to help enact positive social change and raise the quality of life for new residents and citizens.

"Her dogged determinedness for this organization, to work and to be a voice often means she's working long hours and is always on the road," says the Rev. Stephen Copley, vice chairman for the coalition. "Even when things seem uncertain and it's a struggle and people's lives are at stake, she keeps a sense of optimism."

Named a White House Champion of Change by President Obama for those efforts, Reith keeps her cool. It serves her well at the coalition and as the youngest person and first Latina on the Arkansas State Board of Education.

"Being a coxswain was probably the most formative in preparing me to deal with politicians," Reith says. "Day in, day out, my job is the little Mexican woman trying to tell these big Caucasian men, 'Listen to me. My voice matters!'"

THE AMERICAN DREAM

Reith, 35, was born in Wisconsin but spent most of her growing up years in Northwest Arkansas. Her parents met in Mexico, where her dad was traveling for work, and once married, they moved to Wisconsin.

The oldest of two girls, Mireya was a good student but had difficulty fitting in at school. There weren't many other Latino families around, and she felt any attention she attracted was negative.

She drew close to her sister, Claudine. Near the same age, they grew up playing tennis together and watching the Green Bay Packers with their family.

"When we were growing up and people would ask me about her, I always joked that she could rule the world if she wanted to, but luckily she just wants to save it," says Claudine Specking. Even then, Reith had everything in order. "Everything in her room had a perfect little spot. As a kid, I would move something on her desk one inch over, and she noticed every time."

On the hardest days, she held tight to her parents' promise. They gave her a Harvard sweatshirt and told her she could become whatever she wanted to be if she didn't listen to anything negative.

"What inspired me was my parents, from a young age, said, 'You can let those kids get to you or you can prove them wrong by being better or even greater than they were,'" she says. "It led me to aspire and believe in the American dream and that all those things could be a part of ours."

Her father's own American dream led them to Arkansas when, taking an early retirement, he found Fayetteville listed in a magazine as one of the top 10 places to live in the country.

At Fayetteville High School, Reith fell under the direction of Becky Cox, who wasn't the first teacher to see Mireya's potential but was the first to help Reith see that potential, too.

She wrote for the school's literary art magazine, became the editor senior year and, through a nomination that Cox made, earned the statewide high school title of Editor of the Year.

"I always tried to be the best I could be at school, but I never thought of myself being good outside of that," she says. "[Ms. Cox] really pushed me to see that in myself."

It gave her the faith to go on to bigger and better things.

PROVING THEM WRONG

That fall, Reith entered Williams College in Massachusetts, where she majored in political science with an emphasis in international relations and also Spanish.

While she was getting the skills that would help her make positive change and help those around her in need, Reith was drawn to anything that tied to her identity. She joined the Latino Student Association during a time when the college was forming its Latino Studies program and so found herself being a voice for the Latino student body.

Like many students, she waited tables and took internships. Waitressing, she says, helped her most in terms of skills, especially in managing egos. But her most valued college experiences were studying abroad in Europe. It fed her love of travel, which began when she spent summers in Mexico with her family.

During those trips, Reith saw her family as a voice of opposition for the decades of one-party rule in Mexico. It inspired her to do the same for people in other countries.

"From a [young] age, I always wondered why there wasn't a woman who was president or someone who was Mexican-American heritage like myself," Reith says. "I was that little kid who said that someday I too could do that. People would ask me why or joke about how could I care about things like that."

She soaked up the experiences of the professors she admired, and made lists of the things she wanted to do in her lifetime -- things she could do to make life better for others.

"She's the most amazing person you've ever met," says Brooks Robinson, Reith's best friend since junior high. "Lesley once told me her aspirations -- to be an ambassador for the U.S., to be a judge and to enrich and make better the lives of women in Latin America. We were in our early 20s when she said this, and it blew my mind, but now she's doing it.

"Everything she's done has brought her to this place."

Reith earned her master's degree in international affairs, with an emphasis in political and economic development, from Columbia University. For those first years after college graduation, she decided the best way to get started on those world-changing goals was to join the Peace Corps.

"I knew that whatever I did, I wanted to have a positive impact," she says. "I really wanted to leave the world better, and I just felt like I wasn't going to learn how to do that if I didn't fully embrace living in those realities and trying solutions while living alongside them."

To know intimately the struggles that someone faced was the ideal way to serve others and motivation to do something immediate about it.

Reith was sent to post-war El Salvador, near the north border, to a community that could use someone with her optimism, work ethic and constant stream of new ideas.

In towns where there was no electricity or paved roads, she worked with the local government, created activities for community members and set up councils.

Reith was energized by the prospect of making real change without the burden of reports to file, fundraising and general bureaucracy. Those two years were strictly service.

It was an adventure, one without air conditioning and with a lot of bugs -- large ones, flying ones and biting ones.

She overcame her terror of spiders and even slayed what locals call the "cow-killing spider," an arachnid with enough venom to take out a human and then some in just one bite.

By the time Reith left, the town was suited with those modern commodities -- electricity in homes, sturdy roads and a name for each street so mail delivery would improve.

The next 14 years were spent in a variety of international capacities through the National Democratic Institute and the United Nations.

Reith's early years with the institute sent her all over Latin America to work on democracy and women's involvement in politics in Nicaragua, Salvador, Bolivia, Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico.

"Through that, I came back to that passion I had for people on the margins of politics," she says. "Especially noticing people -- across countries -- the lack of women and the challenges women had."

When she made women's political participation her focus, it opened her up to other areas of the world and sent her off to central Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet states.

Reith was creating the International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics when she got the call that her dad was terminally ill. She needed to come home.

FINDING THEIR VOICE

Back in Arkansas, Reith was able to help her family during her father's last days as he battled cancer.

She was still working for the United Nations at the time, but she found that both she and what she came to think of as her home state had changed a lot during her absence. Arkansas, along with many other states in the southeastern corner of the country, received a surge of immigrants in a short amount of time, and the community resources -- schools, hospitals, libraries -- were ill prepared to handle it.

"It was a very different Arkansas that I came back to," Reith says. "I wanted to figure out this new Arkansas, what was going on, and meet some new people, do something productive."

She began volunteering in different capacities and somewhere along the way, others helped her realize that the very thing she had been traveling the world to do was something that Arkansas needed.

"When she was getting involved and volunteering, she didn't have any intentions of making a name for herself," says Eric Specking, her brother-in-law. "For her, it was the right thing to do, and she had a passion for it."

"With the new immigrant population, these issues of diversity, integration and inclusion were things that were being addressed at all levels," Reith says. "These were things I had worked on from international perspective with new democracies, and I just realized it translated real well to the conversation that was happening here."

It was unexpected, the opportunity to stay and work toward fairness and political openness on home base, and she snatched it up, realizing she could make a difference here.

In 2010, Reith became the executive director and sole staff of Arkansas United Community Coalition with the goal of empowering immigrants and supporting a smooth integration for them in to the community.

Two ways Reith has made headway toward that goal is through making immigrants into leaders and encouraging civic participation.

"Some of those initial emergencies around the services had been addressed," Reith says. "But no one as of yet was really talking about the leadership of immigrants. No one, at that time, was specifically working with our legislators, our elected officials and building awareness ... about the realities of these communities."

AUCC programs Latino Candidate Boot Camp and Change Agents, for first- and second-generation immigrants, are geared specifically for creating leaders. It's Mireya's way of educating fellow immigrants on the American political system and instilling confidence in them to influence the policies that have an effect on their lives.

Michel Rangel was so affected by the Change Agents program that she went to work for the coalition.

"Meeting Mireya was the first time I had met such an accomplished woman that wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do," Rangel says. "I wanted to be a part of anything that gave the Latino community a voice. The work we do means so much to me and to our community.

"I finally found my role model."

Reith's programs have been a driving force for campaigns, advocacy and led to many conversations between immigrants and leaders about civil rights, protection, education and immigration reform.

They made candidates, created more informed voters, built up immigrants' confidence in the American vote and helped keep leaders better informed.

"Those are the conversations we set out to have," Reith says. "Not to put ourselves against or counter to our elected officials but to be support to them, allies, resources of information and, on their end, to be conduits of information to the immigrant community."

In recent years, AUCC expanded to include four other community organizers, stretching their reach from approximately six communities to 17 with the idea that all immigrants in the state have someone nearby to turn to for help.

Through it all, Reith found Arkansas to be an agreeable political climate in advocating for the immigrant community.

She was reminded of this recently at a national conference where she worked alongside people from the Wal-Mart corporate office.

"With all the stereotypes they had about a place like Arkansas, they could hardly believe the biggest company of the world was working alongside undocumented immigrants talking about solutions that would help lift up this region to new potential, but we were, and we are, and I think that's something uniquely Arkansan."

NAN Profiles on 03/01/2015

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