Leadership Commitments

Tepeyac Leadership Institute has inspired me to share its knowledge of leadership. In the following school year, I will begin a book club with my colleagues at a public school using Virtuous Leadership by Alexandre Havard. Through this I hope to foster conversation about true leadership and open the door to a book club grounded in the Great Books model. This club will meet once a week among the faculty at the school to foster Socratic discussion and their intellectual development in the good, the true, and the beautiful.

My wife is an African American of protestant background. Since I reconnected with my Catholic roots a year ago and have been faithfully attending Mass every Sunday, I haven’t felt a connection or feeling of acceptance, resulting in a reluctance to take my entire family to Mass. This feeling is one that even my wife picked up on and we’ve talked about it. It’s an area I think I can help in to foster better relations among all ethnicities at our church. I’d do this by first conferring with the Pastor and formulating a plan to embrace all racial ethnicities and [...]

The pandemic has impacted everyone around the world, and with that it brought a lot of grief. Being inspired by the Holy Spirit, my own grief experience and seeing the increasingly big need to accompany individuals with their recent losses, I will commit to start a Grief Support group in my local community; with the intention to provide a space to make grief more bearable and help those to find solace in seeking help from the Lord during this difficult time. I will also commit to recruit participants from my area to join the TLI program in the future cohort.

As a survivor of spiritual abuse, it is my commitment to be a voice and resource for those who have experienced similar suffering. When grooming and abuse occurs at the hands of consecrated religious, victims can confuse the nature, characteristics, and attributes of the abuser with God's and the Church He established. By telling my story with a supporting curriculum, I hope to bring those still hurting back into a healing relationship with God and the Catholic faith.

My leadership commitment is with God and myself. I would like to keep growing spiritually by reading more about my faith and catholic issues. The Tepeyac Leadership Initiative program has created in me a need for more knowledge of my faith as well as the way in which other issues are related to my faith. I will commit to read at least three books a year on topics related to my faith with the objective of growing spiritually. Also, I will promote the TLI program to help other people find the information to growth in their faith as I did.

I work for RDF, a secular nonprofit with Catholic values. Learning from this intersection I want to take my experience working with secular nonprofits and expand RDF’s support of faith-based nonprofits nationally. Providing technical assistance, resource, business development and exploring investment opportunities for faith-based nonprofits thru the San Juan Diego Institute. I hope to maximize their impact and evangelization. Faith based nonprofits are on the frontlines of the increasing antagonism toward faith in the US. Creating networks and connections with secular nonprofits to reach a broader audience and reinforcing Catholic values through charity will help reinvigorate faith for many.

TLI has taught me among many other things how much value we can add to our community and society if we get involved and raise our voices. Knowing that we have the tools to impact our community is priceless, especially when you are an immigrant. Our community needs prepared people that can bring back Catholic/Christian values to the public square. My commitment with TLI, myself and God is to continue to work on the prolife service but this time not just in a personal/individual level but also get more involved and support politicians that are also prolife. To start a nonprofit [...]

I commit to creating a council - possibly calling it the Concilium - my goal is to educate Catholic leaders and organizations on each other's duties/programs/outreach and create dialogue and communication, so that we can better facilitate working together. In a time in which Christendom is under attack we should be working together - financially and spiritually to enrich our faith. We need to unite in our causes and help each other's businesses, non-profits, and outreach programs to not just survive but thrive. I've spoken to the Catholic foundation, CEA, Andre house and the Knights so far.

TLI has reassured me there’s plenty of good people working as an army for God. I commit to being part of that army, specifically to defend the unborn. I intend to create a branch of my business named Transactions for Life, donating $1200 out of each transaction to support pro-life organizations and/or produce materials, both in Spanish and English, to bring awareness as to what abortion is and what abortion does.

My experience with TLI has inspired me to commit to a work that serves the pro-life mission. Over the last fifteen years, I have witnessed firsthand how sharing basic biological and moral truths can open hearts and change lives. Our culture has lost the ability to have a rational discussion regarding the nature of the unborn. So many lives are destroyed based on misinformation or ignorance. For my commitment, I will produce a documentary exploring what it means to be a human person. This topic was explored through many different lenses throughout my TLI experience. I hope to illustrate the inherent [...]