Coming to college from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, John Barros tried to become the best version of himself, figuring law school could help him further hone his worldview and the best way to be of service. Service came looking for him, though, in the form of a call from home. Fiind out how returning to what you know and being comfortable with playing the long game can set you up to make true impact, just when home seems ready for you.
Guest John Barros journeyed to college from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston and tried to become the best version of himself by participating in numerous activities and leadership roles. He went into the business world at an insurance company right after graduation, thinking that law school could help him further hone his worldview and the best way to be of service. Service came looking for him, though, in the form of a call from home.
The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a community development organization for which John had volunteered since before school, was in need of an interim executive director and he was asked to apply. They asked him to stay and, in his thirteen years at the helm, organization built affordable housing and small business space, designed new schools to reengage the community around them, and ended up creating the largest urban land trust in America. When the city’s mayor decided not to run again, he heard another call: this time to run. Though that campaign did not lead to the position he sought, he was asked to be the city’s chief of economic development and now seeks the mayoral position once more.
In this episode, find out from John how returning to what you know and being comfortable with playing the long game can set you up to make true impact, just when home seems ready for you…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
John Barros, a lifelong resident of Boston’s Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods, previously served as the Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative for more than a dozen years and the Chief of Economic Development for the city until recently when he made the announcement that he is running to be the next mayor of Boston in November 2021.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
John Barrows: Somebody said to me just not too long ago, John, just make sure you're winning every day, right? Make sure you're moving forward. It doesn't mean you're going to achieve what your ultimate goals are. But for complex social change and social goals, that journey needs to be, you know, one that is won every day.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Coming to college from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, John Barrows tried to become the best version of himself, figuring law school could help him further hone his worldview and best way to be of service. Service came looking for him, though, in the form of a call from home. Find out how returning to what you know and being comfortable with playing the long game can set you up to make true impact just when home seems ready for you…on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm talking with John Barros and we're going to talk about what whole means and how we're always striving to make that place better for us and the people around us. And so, John, it's just a pleasure to have you have you here on the show.
JB: Thanks, it's a pleasure to be on. Thanks for doing this and connecting people and their stories. This is a gift. It's a nice gift for us.
LJR: Well, great. So the gift begins by your going back and answering for me: when we were in college, who are you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
JB: Yeah, great question. So when we were in college, like everybody else was young, inquisitive. At Dartmouth, we were in a bubble, but it felt like it was the whole world, right? And so everything was magnified and we were trying too hard to be our best selves and at the same time didn't know what to expect, right? So Dartmouth was an amazing experience. It was a tough experience for a young Black man like me coming from an urban setting. And then being in the mountains and trying to figure it out, right? Trying to figure out who I was in that setting, trying to figure out who I was supposed to be and I was supposed to be doing. So I was pretty active at Dartmouth when I was there, and I was lucky to play different leadership roles, particularly in the Black community, as the head of the Black underground theater association or for a short period of time, the editor of the Black Praxis newsletter. I was elected the president of the African-American society. I was invited to be part of Paleopitous, which was a senior leadership group to advise the administration working closely with, at that time, Dean Pelton. I was also invited to be part of the Casque & Gauntlet society, really excited to be part of that community. So I did a lot at Dartmouth, plugged in, tried to be active, try to be the best young man I could be to get ready for the world.
LJR: And where did you think that was going to take you?
JB: You know, it wasn't clear. I was coming out of Dartmouth both trying to figure out a corporate internship that I had held as part of the Inroads internship program and grad school. In my mind, I would work for a couple of years and maybe go to grad school. So the corporate job at an insurance company, Chubb Group and insurance, took me to New York. So from Boston, short stint in Boston, and then to New York, spent some time in New York, applied to law school. So I was going to I was heading out to law school, but then got a call to think about applying for an interim executive director position at an organization that I had volunteered at since I was a really young man in my neighborhood. It was a neighborhood improvement organization. And I did that. I applied and was given the interim executive director role. And really the idea was to be interim executive director for a short period of time while they look for an executive director and then go to law school. Well, didn't happen. They hired me as permanent executive director and I stayed there for 13 years doing amazing work: Building affordable housing, turning empty lots into parks, playgrounds, urban agricultural land. We built a 10,000 square foot greenhouse. We built community small business space. We ended up creating the largest urban land trust in America, protecting homes and parks from further development and protecting a neighborhood from displacement. Shortly into that work, education and schools in the neighborhood became a big part of the conversation, a big part of our planning. And so we ended up designing a couple of new schools and working with some schools to re-engage the community around them and improve those schools. That took me to the Boston School committee, where then mayor, the mayor of Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino, appointed me to the school committee. And I did more work with schools at that point, looking over all of the Boston Public School system and ushering in new policies with Boston Public Schools—we brought in what is called a weighted student formula to Boston, where schools would be funded based on the number of students and a certain set of criteria that have been shown to be social determinants of success: concentration of poverty, the concentration of English language learners, the concentration of students that had special needs and needed special attention. We successfully did that. And some time after serving a few years on the school committee, the mayor decided he wasn't going to run for reelection. I received some calls. It was ambitious at the time, but the energy started to swell around me. And so I jumped in the race. And we had a good conversation. Twelve of us ran for mayor. It was the first time in 20 years we had an open mayoral seat. And so there was a lot of pent up energy. And in Boston had a great conversation about where we were, who we were, who we wanted to be, where we were headed as a city. It was a diverse group of candidates. And at the end of the day, the person who was elected mayor—Mayor Marty, Martin, Walsh, who today is our Secretary of Labor for Biden—invited me to come in and be his chief of economic development. And I spent the last 7 plus years being the chief of economic development for the city of Boston, trying to address hundreds of years of inequities, hundreds of years of some of the injustices in our economy that have created a part of the city that is extremely wealthy and well-resourced and another part of the city who is not participating in the city's growth and is left out and in a real unjust way.
LJR: Yeah, so, so much to unpack there. I want to…there are hopping off points to what you're doing or thinking about now, but also want to go back a bit. So you came back home, really home like an extension of your community, to Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and you took that full time job, but were you still thinking, yeah, this is…I'm going to do this for a little while. And then, like, my real life is going to start. Tell me about what you were thinking as a young person. And when it really sunk in like, no, I'm the one that's going to lead this. And we I see the vision. And I'm getting people into this vision. How did that feel to you?
JB: No, that's right, Leslie. It you know, I took over as executive director at the age of 26. Right so young man still thinking, excuse me, I'm still thinking that grad school should be the next move. I put some real seasoned people around me. I had a fabulous kitchen cabinet of people like Gus Newport, who was the first black mayor of the city of Berkeley in California; Greg Watson, former commissioner of agriculture for the state of Massachusetts; and others, right? Just really some seasoned people. And they guided me through. And I had all the support. I needed to be a successful executive director at a successful 13 years. During that time, we won awards. We we won large grants. We were one of the, I believe, 11 originally chosen neighborhoods for a Promise Neighborhoods grant from the US Department of Education under the Obama administration, which is a very competitive grant that went to places that successfully articulated a vision for how they would create a system that would support people from birth to career, right? And we were proud to do that work. And I remember at one point, sitting as part of a roundtable for the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado, and having a conversation with then the dean of the law school at Georgetown University about my yet still dream of going to law school. And he just kind of looked at me and he said, you know with the kind of work you're doing, what are you thinking? Right was like, what do you think about going to law school? The kind of exposure, experience, education, you're getting now. You're going to pay for in law school; you're going to get it. Right? It doesn't exist. That was a real turning point for me. And I did get my master's afterwards in public policy. But, you know, I really started to at that point, I think in a major way fully be present in the work that I was doing and took full advantage of the opportunity to serve my community at the same time grow as a professional, as an individual.
LJR: Yeah and probably around that same time, you were kind of putting down personal roots, again with your own family and kind of having a life outside. I mean, as an executive director, I know you don't have a life outside, but, you know, other things are happening. Kind of talk me through your late 30s in Boston.
JB: No, that's great. So late, late 30s in Boston, that was sort of trying to navigate being a director of a non-profit, being on the school committee for the city of Boston and trying to start a family, you know, that came together nicely where I married another Dartmouth alum, Tchintcia Barros. And we now have a family of four. So there are four amazingly energetic children in our home right now. We’re three boys and finally, a girl, I would have kept going. We've started a family stay in the same neighborhood that we both grew up in here in Roxbury, Dorchester section of Boston. And we're both very, very engaged and an active in our community.
LJR: I would say so. But, John, I've just got to know, like you were at this organization for 14 years. And at that. That's a long time. So was it because you knew there was more work to be done?
JB: Yeah, I think, you know, I had mentioned earlier Gus Newport, who was a mentor, an advisor. And actually in years before I got to the organization, he was the executive director. And he said to me, hey, John, look, you know, the time frame for real social change takes a long time, right? And I was able to start some projects that other people pick up. I was able to do some things. But if you really want to stay in this game and have some change in this neighborhood, then you're going to have to pace yourself. You can't grind it out and try to change everything today. You've got to choose some things [where] you can have impact. And then you've got to play the long game. And he was right.
LJR: Cause social change is messy, right? It's not like building a widget and improving on that widget. It's like people and these issues that are so hard.
JB: Yeah, Yeah. Not only are they hard, you want to do something about it. And so you want to help. You want to, you want to be there. You want to now you're going to start a process because few people got evicted from their homes. And it's real. Right you want to start a new project because people lost their jobs, right, and they got laid off. And that's a problem. You want to start something new because a couple of businesses shut down and you're trying to figure how to keep them alive. So so pacing yourself and being realistic about what you can do, knowing that what you're trying to do, particularly in social change, takes a long time. And takes some sustainability and is really dynamic. And that in itself is going to change so many times and ask for real creativity. You've got to pace yourself. You've got to rest in order for you to really sort of be there for a long, long enough time to see some changes happen.
LJR: Yeah, I think that's hard for some people to think ‘I'm just I'm going to make a big impact by the end of this time, but every day is going to feel really small.’ But small forward is always good, right?
JB: Yeah, no. Somebody said to me just not too long ago, John, just make sure you're winning every day. Right? make sure you're moving forward. It doesn't mean you're going to achieve what your ultimate goals are. But for complex social change and social goals, that journey needs to be, you know, one that is won every day. Right and sometimes winning that journey every day is your own mental health. LJR: Right and making sure you're just there for the next day
LJR: Or there for your four kids, right?
JB: Or for you for kids. Yeah, that's right.
LJR: So, there were foreshadowings of this. When you discussed your early run for mayor, you were in that chief executive excuse me, chief economic development role for a number of years, six, seven, something like that. Right but there became more energy, as you put it before. Energy surrounded you again. Talk me through your latest announcement.
JB: So having served 7 plus years as chief of economic development for the city of Boston, we actually were ready, the Walsh administration was ready to launch a second reelection bid for his third term and there were rumors surrounding the mayor at the time that Biden was interested in him being Secretary of Labor. And I remember the early conversations with him. He made it clear that that wasn't really his interest. He wasn't trying to go to D.C. and he wanted to stay in Boston to continue to serve the people. He loved the job, loved experience and had more to do. I agreed. I agreed and I was fully on board, except one day. He received a call from then President-elect Biden as he was trying to assemble his cabinet, and he said after 20 minutes, he couldn't say no to Biden. Now, President Biden. And we both recognize the opportunity that was presented for him to serve on the cabinet for the United States of America and in an area that he had to add so much passion around, labor, and a lot of experience, we had done a lot of good work on in Boston. And so that news broke and immediately, people started to scramble and have conversations about who would step in or who would run for mayor because he was leaving. And, you know, the calls began again. And this time after 7 plus years of experience running the city, they were different calls. And in fact, they weren't calls of let's go do this because we can help drive change as sort of the young executive running a nonprofit. But it was more of hey you should take the helm of the city because you have the experience, you've put in the time, and you can hit the ground running out of time when the city is really hurting from the covid pandemic--where we have businesses closing that might not open back up, where we have people losing jobs, trying to figure out their lives. And we have huge issues that have been both made raw and obvious and made obvious and exaggerated through the COVID pandemic with disparities for particularly brown and black residents here in Boston and all over the country, where we now have a movement in the country to reckon with our racist past, racist present, and the outcomes that you see in the disparities that you see in all parts of our society and all sections of our lives. And that's the time we're in. That's the moment we're in. And that's the opportunity we have. And so for me, I really feel like I need to answer those calls and bring together a team of people that are ready to embrace the moment, meet the moment and make the changes that we need to make as part of our as part of a city, as part of a state, as part of the country.
LJR: Yeah and although with a different set of experiences behind you and kind of that all of that that you've learned, you're still going to be grappling with those same questions that the 12 candidates before were like, who are we as Boston? Who do we want to be as Boston? I think I've read that you've said recently Boston is ready to have a black man lead. So how do you think Boston's going to come up with the answers to those questions? Who do we want to be? How will you help lead that discussion on the way to the election?
JB: You know, it was interesting in 2013, as I launched my campaign and started talking to Bostonians, I still had an old image of Boston. It was an image of Boston where there were neighborhoods. I couldn't go to as a young black man and wouldn't be welcomed, wouldn't be well received. But in fact, I was proven wrong. I went to neighborhoods, you know, neighborhoods with predominantly white neighbors and was well received. And people want to have a conversation about diversity, want to have a conversation about who Boston was. Well, that is more the case today. Not only do we want to have the conversation, people want to shed the image of Boston being a racist city. People want to send a different message. They want leadership to represent the diversity of the city. And I continue to hear that everywhere I go. In fact, for the last 200 years, Boston has only elected a white male as its mayor. And it's an opportunity for Boston to elect someone that is more reflective of today's Boston and sent a different message that in fact, we can have diversity, we can elect a black man, as I said recently, to be mayor of Boston.
LJR: Yeah so, John, looking back at the young John, who was trying to be the best person he could be in college and achieving that, certainly at a young age sometimes. I know I was saying what you said at first. I was like, well, some of us felt that way sometimes, but I think, thinking back to him, would he see this as a really oh, yeah, I can see I can see myself doing that in the future or would—I'm getting the headshake. Tell me.
JB: No, no. There was never…No. The answer is no. Even a young John at Dartmouth, believing in all my potential, believing in all I could do or wanted to do, being a political official or elected official wasn't part of the plan, wasn't part of the dream, the vision and the pathway. And so, yeah, this is different for me. This is a journey that went places that I didn't expect, I didn't plan for. Part of it was, you know, a taste of the impact and importance of local government when I was appointed to them, to the school committee and understanding what you can do and how quickly you can have impact on people's lives. Local government matters in a way that's really important. And you can have impact on the individual family, the individual, and have impact on your state and really drive regionally and nationally. And so I caught the bug, if you would, and felt not only that it was a place for impact, but also felt that I was having some impact and could do more when I sat as part of the school committee and then when the opportunity came and people started to sort of organize around me, I felt like I couldn't turn it, turn it down. It's still it's still a little surreal as a candidate. It's not, there's nothing normal about being a candidate and being a candidate for anything. There is…you've got to believe in the collective. You've got to believe in the cause. You've got to believe in the purpose because this is all bigger than one individual, right? And if you think you can play a role as a candidate to help move something bigger than you forward, then that gives you the energy to get up every day and do things that aren't normal, like call people for money or call people for support or call people to help make some phone calls for you or, you know, and so but because I think we do have a purpose as a campaign that is larger and is more important and trying to create a more just and equitable society and trying to help neighborhoods revitalize and people have better lives, you know, I can do it. I can get up in the morning and say, OK, I'm going to give I'm going to give what I can to this cause and serve the public in the best way that I can.
LJR: Yeah, well, John, I'm always astounded when I talk to our classmates about the kinds of impacts that they're making in their communities and on the stages that they choose. And it just seems as though you have found those communities along the way. And, yes, they get bigger, but you're really there for the impact. So we're just astounded about the progress that you've made, but wouldn't be surprised if we look back and who you were. So we just wish you all the best. Can't wait to watch as this unfolds and hope that we can continue hearing from you in the years to come. Thanks we'll get back on this right afterwards or we'll get back on this right afterwards. And we’ll either be saying, hey, this is how we want this, or here's what we learn. Well, we didn't.
LJR: There are some lessons; we're trying, right? It's all about giving it a try. The old college try.
JB: Thanks. I really appreciate it being on with you.
LJR: That's that was Boston native John Barrows, previously, the executive director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative for more than a dozen years and the chief of economic development for the city until recently, when he made the announcement that he is running to be the next mayor of Boston in November 2021. As John said, it can take a long time to make a big impact. But every day we can make at least a little. Every week, I talk with classmates about the impacts they are making in their communities and beyond. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts or at RoadsTakenShow.com to hear me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, talk to them on the next episodes of Roads Taken.