Jordana Barton-Garcia: RGV colonia residents brought digital divide to Federal Reserve Bank’s attention

I am Jordana Barton and I am from the colonia of Benavides in South Texas. My career path has taken me from public education, to Latino studies in higher education, to nonprofit community development and micro finance, to banking to the federal reserve and to the leadership of a major health system philanthropy serving South Texas. I am currently the owner of a small business, a social enterprise, Barton Garcia Advisors and senior fellow with Connect Humanity. I am working with many stakeholders to advance the deployment of broadband infrastructure and digital inclusion programs to transform the economy of the South Texas Triangle region. While at the Federal Reserve I authored Las Colonias in the 21st Century; Progress Along the Texas-Mexico Border. And several publications that came upon its heels regarding closing the digital divide and preparing people for the expanding digital economy.

So, it was actually the people of the Texas border colonias that brought the attention of the digital divide and the digital economy, indeed, to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. It was their stories that told us how significant it was. I learned about the homework gap from families in the colonias before I knew it was called the homework gap. And I learned about the digital divide on workforce opportunities, even being able to partake in workforce opportunities and having the skills as well to be able to fill the jobs that we currently have. Growing up in a colonia, my brother, he dropped out of high school. There were very low expectations for the children. He dropped out of high school. He worked the middle skills job, those are jobs that don’t require college degrees. But there were opportunities for him to get his life together and figure out what he was going to do. He got his GED, went to community college, went to university and then went to medical school. He became a surgeon and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well, with the Air Force Guard. Incredibly, serving his community everyday; bilingual surgeon. He was a dropout. We could have lost him if we did not have those pathways into the middle class that we had in our generation. We had ways in. We could fill those middle skills jobs and put ourselves through college and have a career. And leave the millions of dollars in taxes that he and the rest of our siblings have paid – even if you are just looking at that stark number, it is incredible, right? Plus the giving back into our community.