Today we’d like to introduce you to Barry Rivera.
Hi Barry , can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa and graduated in peak recession time with a Finance degree that I didn’t love. It was hard to get a job but finally found something using my degree but quickly realized it wasn’t for me. In a moment of wanderlust I Googled: jobs in Costa Rica and found an organization called Vision Service Adventures that led summer camps for high school students focused on service, cultural immersion and as the name suggested, adventure! I applied and was hired to work for two months on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Although it wasn’t Costa Rica I was very excited, albeit a bit nervous, and I quit my job that I had worked so hard to get and drove to Bozeman, MT for the staff training with really no idea of what I was getting into. I ended working all of June and July in Mississippi when they asked to go to northern Montana for the month of August to work a shorter session on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. That summer changed my life and I fell in love with service oriented work. I spent the next year substitute teaching back in Iowa and the following summer riding my bike from Portland, ME to Santa Barbara, CA with an organization called Bike and Build focused on raising money and awareness for affordable housing. The following summer I went back to lead a Visions camp in Mississippi but at the staff training in Bozeman I fell in serious “like” with a girl named Nolan who was working that summer of all places in the Blackfeet Res. We wrote letters all summer and when that following year she took an AmeriCorp position in Austin I quickly left home to follow her! We’ve now been here for 11 years, have two kids and made Austin our home. I found a job with a non-profit early education center called Mainspring Schools where I worked for four years with underserved children and families. The work felt monumentally important, but when an opportunity arose to blend my passion for service, people and the environment I was compelled and grateful to accept a position overseeing the Volunteer Program for Austin Parks Foundation.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Of course not! But suffering builds trust, intimacy and maturity in a way that nothing else really can. When I reflect back on things I mostly feel gratitude for all the relationships, provision, fun and growth. But when I narrow down, what’s underneath it all, and what makes it real and true, is the growing up I had to slowly but surely do through learning that putting others before yourself can be hard and sometimes sloppy, but yields such greater joy than just chasing fun, adventures and short-term happiness. This has been a theme in my life and now career through working in non-profits that are trying to solve essentially unsolvable issues like systematic poverty and environmental degradation. But it’s also a part of investing in relationships and trying to love and serve people through messy, hard times. It’s forced me to reconcile this part of me that only wants things to be easy and fun and confront my own propensity to stuff emotions down and run from hard things. This is all a lifelong work, but I feel so thankful for all the loving support I’ve received that compels me to do the same for others and give it my all in the face of immense challenges!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My title is Senior Programs Manager for Austin Parks Foundation, which means I oversee a lot of our community facing programs like volunteering, Adopt-A-Park, community engagement and support and grants and fiscal sponsorship. My priority is to support and uplift the communities around historically underserved parks in order to let their voices be heard, activate their parks and build community to see more vibrant and healthy neighborhoods! This is long term work, but we utilize our resources to meet the community where they’re at, seek to understand their needs and desires and come alongside them in pursuit of those aspirations. It’s often hard to measure, but I do feel very proud of the way we take the time to listen, even if there’s not much we can do, and build relationships to uplift and support people that have often felt marginalized. Austin is an altruistic city that loves the outdoors so it’s not hard to get people involved necessarily, every year we mobilize nearly 10,000 volunteers across the city! But what’s much harder is sustained support of the parks with the highest needs. That’s why for the past few years we’ve really narrowed our approach to proactively focus on a limited number of parks in the hopes of helping build groups that are set up to steward their parks for the long run.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
I feel happiest when talking with others, especially in the outdoors! I just love learning what makes people tick and feel really energized through deep discussions with others. My professional roles have very much been about building relationships in the hopes of supporting those I’m working with, but I so often feel really supported myself through the work. Again, I feel very grateful to have worked in spaces that facilitate this kind of deep connection. At home, we try hard to live slowly and be with each other, physically and emotionally, as much as possible. We spend a lot of time camping with our best friends, hiking as a family, drawing, reading and of course watching movies. Loving well is hard, but also the best. Nobody feels great about themselves for being really good at something that’s easy! I’d crush at t-ball, but hitting a home run off an MLB pitcher, now that would bring me great pride! I just want to humbly pursue dinging homers in the challenge of loving others and being loved.
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