As a Korean American immigrant and the deputy director and senior executive vice president at MassDevelopment, Theresa Park knows firsthand how immigrant entrepreneurs enrich their new homelands. Through MassDevelopment, she offers financing and real estate solutions that help foreign-born business owners build organizations that strengthen their communities. Tune in to learn her strategies for celebrating and empowering immigrant entrepreneurs.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed. And this is JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Immigrants have always been economic drivers and revitalizers. Just look at Lowell, Massachusetts or Lawrence, Massachusetts or any of the gateway cities in your state. Immigrants tend to move into areas that are cheap. Namely, places in economic decline. Then they open up shops and businesses, bring in goods and services and gradually revitalize these once downtrodden areas. For Theresa Park, deputy director and senior executive vice president at Mass Development, a group that offers financing and real estate solutions to drive economic growth across Massachusetts, she’s seen this up close and she’s lived it. An immigrant from Korea who moved to Lawrence, she saw firsthand how immigrants built their lives from the ground up and in so doing, economic and cultural vibrancy to their new home cities. And when she went on to work for cities like Lowell and Lawrence, she herself was the one to reach out to immigrant owned businesses, nurture their growth and see their broad impact. Theresa talks us through her experience with immigrant business owners, how she developed their trust, how she celebrates them and the many ways they enrich their new homeland in this week’s Jobmakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Theresa Park, deputy director and senior executive vice president of MassDevelopment, welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?
Theresa Park: I’m very well. And thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here today.
Denzil Mohammed: So tell us a little bit about the work you currently do.
Theresa Park: So I’m now with a state agency. The bulk of my background is really in local government working in planning and development, economic development field. Last year I accepted a position with Mass Development. And Mass Development is the state’s financing agency as well as its land bank. And so we get involved in a lot of development-related projects, primarily from the financing side, but we also provide real estate technical assistance as well as offering grants and other programs through the state’s, one-stop process; the application process, for which is currently open. And it’s a really good way to tap into other programs available through the state.
Denzil Mohammed: And how does immigration figure into your work? When we see that one in seven Massachusetts residents is foreign-born, that they’re twice as likely to start a business, that they’ve been, traditionally, engines of economic growth in downtrodden parts of the country. And of course we have Kendall Square, for instance.
Theresa Park: Which is why we have programs that support business growth, we have programs that support gateway cities, we have programs that support developers so that we could increase the housing that is in such great demand in the commonwealth. So we have a pretty good toolkit of programs and services that could be brought to bear. Now, we just want to make sure, whether it is from the level of outreach we do, the engagement that we do, the people who can take advantage of those programs feel like we can be a partner to them. And so to that extent, the communications work that we’re doing, we want to make sure that whether it is a business started by immigrants, whether it is in communities where there may be a lot of immigrants. I live in the city of Lowell, for example. Historically, they have been a gateway for a lot of immigrants, in the beginning, to work in the textile industry. But that flow continues as well. And I think that there are great opportunities in places like Lowell and Lawrence and Lynn and other gateway cities. And we want to make sure that we get the word out and we make sure that we can deliver in a way that is meaningful and that’s also very culturally confident.
Denzil Mohammed: That is excellent. And I know that this is personal to you as well because you have your own immigrant story, is that right?
Theresa Park: And so you’re making a commitment to this new way of life. From my parents’ perspective they worked hard for many, many years, so they can make sure that their kids get a good education and be successful. So I think that’s pretty typical of what other immigrant families experience. Some go on to start businesses and we see them succeed. I think the award dinner that you have every year recognizes the tremendous contributions that they have made, from a job standpoint, and the impact that they’ve had on neighborhoods as far as services.
Denzil Mohammed: That is really well said and I know this is directly from your experiences in cities like Lowell and Lawrence. Talk us through your experiences in these cities. What did you see with the immigrant business community? How did you foster their growth? What was the response like from the rest of the community?
Theresa Park: And we’re trying to make those connection points to say that, “Okay, this is what you had told us, this is what we can provide,” so we would make that connection. We had people on staff, or within the larger department, who could speak different languages. So we try to take advantage of that so that it’s not always just that we could only interact in one language. We wanted to make sure that we could communicate at different levels. And to that extent, we want to make sure that whenever we did everything from marketing, for example, or pulling together collateral that talks about the work that we do, we were multilingual about it. We always made sure that the representation was very broad and encompassing of all the different types of businesses, not just the high tech, but the neighborhood type ‘mom and pop’ type of businesses because they will eventually hire people, right? Even if it was just like one or two jobs. To me, that’s still meaningful, right? Because that one person has a family. And because of that job, now they’re able to do these other things that they may not have been able to do before.
Denzil Mohammed: You brought up the immigrant entrepreneur awards, which my organization, The Immigrant Learning Center, hosts every year, which is this year happening on March 8th. And I have to say that we have a special category called business growth for fast growing businesses that are employing lots of people. And three of those past winners were all Dominican American and all came from Lawrence. So the reputation of certain cities like Lawrence, they’re growing
Theresa Park: People don’t invest in places without the belief that there is opportunity there.
Denzil Mohammed: So how does being an immigrant, even though you arrived as such a young child … you’re not only foreign-born, but you also have a very global perspective having traveled around the world and continuing to do that. Do you think that that has given you a particular perspective in your work of planning and the development of cities?
Theresa Park: I would say the biggest life skill that I feel like I benefit from, because of that immigrant experience as well as the global travel, is problem solving. You could present the same problem in a lot of different places and you’re gonna get different kinds of answers or different types of solutions. And I feel like if you travel and if you have the immigrant experience, it’s almost like you expand the range of your thinking when you’re problem solving. Because you’re not just fixing a widget. You’re also thinking about it in, for me personally, a more complex way. And so solving for problem ‘X’, all of a sudden you have all these different ways of addressing it.
Denzil Mohammed: I remember a joke from Trevor Noah saying, “If you don’t like immigrants, then you’re not allowed to like immigrant food. So you just end up with a potato”.
Theresa Park: An immigrant you do some great things with that potato!
Denzil Mohammed: Of course! So many different things, but we really do, as people living in the United States, take for granted the flavor that we are given and offered every day in terms of food, in terms of holidays, in terms of cultures. Overall though, you’ve seen many different immigrant populations starting businesses in different places. Have you seen them integrate? Learning the language, or their children being successful and things like that?
Theresa Park: Yeah, I think some of that has to do with when they come to this country, right? There’s a level of acculturation that needs to occur. My parents came here when they were, I think, close to 40, maybe? I can’t recall exactly. But then they had to learn the language and gain full employment, and so on. So I think the challenges are very real. I think it could be eased. So like I had mentioned earlier, when I came to this country there weren’t a lot of Koreans. So we had to acculturate very quickly. I think that, at the same time, it could be a lonely experience for people, as well, where you don’t have your community. I think the level of acculturation changes with the generation. I think when the parents first come here, they’re so busy working. Whether that’s being working for somebody or working for themselves. And it’s really relying on the next generation to then more fully immerse, take advantage of the job opportunities that are out there, the educational opportunities that are out there. So I think immersion happens in a couple of different ways. I think if you come to a place where there is a ready community, that could help ease a transition. I think that is really important. Oftentimes you also find these cities and people who can be the connector to different kinds of programs and services, so they could get grounded more readily, which hopefully means that they could have more time to then attend the kids’ parent-teacher meetings or maybe even attend a community meeting. Or it could be helping the next generation of immigrants that may be coming through the door, helping them with the acculturation. But I think how quickly and how easily you can do that depends on how old you are when you come to this country, what kind of community is here to ease a transition. And I think just remembering that people are always just trying to do their best. And just always giving people the benefit of the doubt, because this is a really hateful rhetoric that’s come out. And it’s based on some really unfounded misinformation. And I just hope that people dig a little deeper, people be a little bit more open minded and just remember that we’re all part of the human race, right? And we really have more in common than not.
Denzil Mohammed: That’s beautifully said. And I think at the end of the day, we have to remember that the economic development of immigrants, through their businesses, helped the entire community. It doesn’t just help that one immigrant. It creates jobs, it creates more taxes, it creates a safer neighborhood, increased goods and services. We did some research on immigrant essential workers during the pandemic and where they were left out of the CARES Act. For instance, things that impeded their ability to help all of us recover. We could have recovered faster, we could have recovered in a more efficient way. If you were to close off this podcast interview with a message for the U.S., when it comes to the value of the immigrant entrepreneurship and recognizing that value, what do you think would be?
Theresa Park: I would say that if we were a formula, we’re a plus sign, not a minus sign from an immigrant standpoint. It’s not really a formula, but I would say that when we talk about immigration we’re talking about people who are coming to this country because of what’s been touted about all that’s good about this country. And I think it is really important that we continue to prize what we hold dear in this country’s ability to be the beacon of light for freedom, for democracy and for opportunity for everybody.
Denzil Mohammed: That’s very beautifully said, Theresa. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful interview. And thank you for sharing, as well, your own personal stories with us. Theresa Park, deputy director, and senior executive vice president of Mass Development, thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast.
Theresa Park: Thank you for having me, Denzil, so great to be here.
Denzil Mohammed: Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for today’s insightful conversation on how entrepreneurial immigrants are a rebound for cities in decline. If you know an outstanding immigrant entrepreneur we should talk to, email Denzil. That’s: denzil@Jobmakerspodcast.org. I’m Denzil Mohammed, join us next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.