Reflecting on 10 years at The Children’s Partnership
By Mayra E. Alvarez
Ten years ago, I moved from Washington, D.C., back to my home state of California to lead The Children’s Partnership. I was inspired by the opportunity to serve families like my own and to hold family, community, and culture close as guiding values in our work to advance real policy change.
I grew up outside of San Diego as the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents who worked hard to make sure my sisters and I were safe, warm, fed, and loved. But no matter how hard my parents worked, we were never able to own a home or have steady access to health care. These parts of the American Dream were just out of reach for us. Even as I grew up in a loving community, I could see how systems were designed to exclude families of color and low-income families like mine.
That understanding, rooted in my own family’s story, has guided my leadership as president of The Children’s Partnership. It has deepened my belief in what is possible when we work together to change the systems millions of families rely on for their health and well-being.
I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished over the past decade. We’ve grown together in ways I could not have imagined:
In 2016, we celebrated when Health4All Kids became law in California, helping hundreds of thousands of children in immigrant families enroll in health coverage for the first time. When President Trump was elected shortly afterward, we pivoted our work to address the fear and confusion about which systems were safe for immigrants and their children.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began, upending our social safety net, changing how we worked, and harming our communities of color. In response, we launched new work on COVID-19, mental health, telehealth, and more.
My commitment to diversifying our staff and board, and to refocusing our program work on health equity and California’s most marginalized children, became even more urgent when we witnessed a long-needed national reckoning on racial justice sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Today, as elected leaders and institutions have deleted words like “justice” and “equity” from their vocabulary, we know the work continues. I am proud to have worked alongside teammates – past and present – who hold me accountable to our values, our commitment to justice, and our community partnerships.
In 2021, this work became even more personal to me as I became a mother to an incredible daughter. It is now more apparent to me than ever that it truly takes a village to raise a child. American narratives around individualism and “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” only alienate us and our children from loving, supportive villages. Our village isn’t just the tía who watches the kids after school or the neighbor who gives us a ride to the pharmacy – it’s accessible health coverage through Medi-Cal, early education through Head Start, fulfilling meals through CalFresh, essential mental health services in school, and much more. Our village is made up of the systems we create that are for all children and families.
And those systems are completely under attack today.
The policies, actions, and rhetoric we have seen with today’s federal administration bring back painful memories of the darkest times in U.S. history, and sadly, as so many elders remind us, it is lived and remembered. Immigrant families are being ripped apart today, just as Black children were taken from their parents in slavery, Indigenous children were forced into boarding schools hundreds of miles away from their families, and Japanese American families were separated in internment camps.
Family separation is deeply embedded in American history, and is a part of our present. It’s happening at our borders and on our streets, through the prison industrial complex, when the federal government ignores science, and in all-too-common abuses of executive power.
This separation is a shared experience of trauma for our children – causing damaging side effects that include ongoing mental health issues, depression, substance abuse, poor academic performance, chronic disease, and more – potentially devastating their trajectory for a lifetime.
We must not be complicit in undermining our collective future. The moral obligation to ensure a just world for coming generations is each of ours.
Today, as I consider what this work calls for, I have found that leadership is rooted in clarity, courage, and care, exercised at the same time. We see this in the rise of neighborhood solidarity teams that check on elders and immigrant families; in rapid community responses that mobilize food, legal support, and mutual aid during moments of crisis; and in community-led monitoring efforts that document harm and protect one another when trust in systems is low. Leadership today requires the ability to hold urgency without panic – to move people toward action while grounding them in shared purpose and values. It is also deeply relational. In this moment, leadership requires building trust across differences, centering those most impacted, and modeling solidarity rather than saviorism, recognizing that our collective safety and progress depend on how well we show up for one another.
I am deeply proud to be part of the work to make our state, our nation, and our world better for all our children; to lead a team that continues to tackle these challenges with determination and compassion; and to work alongside so many partners in our shared struggle for justice and equity.
As the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a woman of color, my leadership is an act of resistance—and the work we do at The Children’s Partnership is a blueprint for the more just future we are working to build.
I thank you for being with us – over the past 10 years, now, and for the work that lies ahead.
