[Press Release for March 1st, 2020]
In the struggle between doing well or doing good, Tribu guides the rising minority in doing both.
Tribu is an online discussion platform for Latinos to explore avenues of emerging life-struggles for new professionals, all from the perspective of peers with similar cultures, backgrounds, and ambitions. A tribe member’s real-life ongoing experiences lead the conversations through topics such as code-switching, being aggressive vs assertive, empathy generation, fulfillment & financial wealth, and traditions vs myths. Spirit Guides, professionals with experiences in community building, self-examination, and personal management, help guide the tribe through curated reflections, inquiries, and growth strategies. The 15 person tribes use WhatsApp to communicate written and oral thoughts to the group whenever the need to release an idea arises. Tribu provides organization, strategy, and a tight group of collaborators to ensure personal and communal growth.
Our grandparents worked for survival, our parents for security, and we work for fulfillment. Unfortunately, this means it becomes increasingly difficult to incorporate advice from our parents because our lives are taking us through challenges in realms our parents are completely unfamiliar with. When looking for guidance elsewhere, we fall short because the further we venture into our professional lives, the fewer Latinos there are. Yet, by 2050 one in 3 Americans will be Latino. When looking towards the past doesn’t help us prepare for guiding the future, where are we supposed to turn?
The silver lining is that Latino cultural upbringings align with today’s collaborative orientation. Latinos are taught to serve people, share responsibility, and build community – a rich foundation for creative inclusive and empowering environments. And as bilingual, multi-cultural, family oriented people, our traits already heavily fall in line with the 21st century “must-have survival skills” of being global, culturally agile, people oriented, and inclusive. What our previous generations suppressed in order to fit into the working American culture is now the advantage the growing Latino US population has for impact.
We just need to understand how to leverage these cultural upbringings to go from dreaming, to executing.
“In this test of life, the members of Tribu are your tutors. As a tribe, they provide each other with decision support rather than decision making. They help each other reframe struggles as excitement and ambition. They help each other understand how to stay culturally connected as they prepare to enter the world stage.“
Morris Vanegas
Rather than focusing on a top-down mentorship model for personal growth, Tribu is a support network that is based on trusted allies and peers. A personal tribe of others like you, who have also failed and succeeded. A tribe whose members act as listeners, bias checkers, advocates, examples, and soundboards as you explore your growth. A tribe of others like you who have gone far, but urge to go further.
But also, partnerships and coalitions must be built externally, not just internally, so to ensure the tribe isn’t just a group of kids dreaming, each tribe has three spirit guides. These spirit guides are geographically and experientially varied, actively participate in the conversations, and support the tribe members by bringing their expertise and resources in founding and running non-profits, teaching “soft-skills” in professional and academic settings, and running life-coach design thinking workshops. Their active participation in the tribe ensures that dreams are executed.
Tribu shifts the professional coaching model from a unidirectional and hierarchical one to one that incorporates Latino heritage aspects of culture, inclusion, and contribution taught at home through exposure to and a strong collaboration with a combination of ambitious latino leaders and professional guides. This peer group moves hand in hand, allowing you to sometimes lead and sometimes be led, but always advancing.
“Tribu combines the professional guidance I seek, the familial environment I work best in, and a communication method tailored towards my sporadic and modern lifestyle, to connect me with the minds of trusted allies who all are searching for a piece of cultural identity in their future roles. They provided a comfortable space for me to have the fearful and vulnerable conversations I needed have to get past plateaus I had reached.”
Talexandria Tocasio-Tortez
To date, Tribu is composed of 10 tribes, each with 12 members and 3 spirit guides from all over the world, each helping their members navigate real-time experiences through discussions led by that particular tribe. Members within tribes are intentionally geographically distant to allow dimensions of culture, response-time, and perspective to contribute to everyone’s learning.
Latino leaders are rarely appointment. Rather, they emerge when there is a need. If you have WhatsApp and a desire for stimulating conversation, simply fill out our form and we’ll follow up with you to find the best Tribu for you.
Old power was about command and control. New power is about collaborating and learning. A community works best when everyone contributes. It is not enough to have like-minded and like-valued people; we need people eager to participate and help advance both themselves and our latino community. We’ve built a watering hole, but aren’t here to push or pull people towards it. Rather, we ask, if you are thirsty for personal growth and fulfillment while staying culturally-connected, come in and have a drink.
Mi casa es tu casa.
– Morris Vanegas