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STUDENT INTERVIEW WITH LUIS UBINAS ’78

grow, and other times meant saving them from going bankrupt. I did that for almost 20 years, living in Boston and San Francisco.

David Kersey h’98: In seventh-grade history, we do a whole section on immigration, including a research project. It involves using the Ellis Island database, which consists of ship manifests written by hand. It’s fun but also difficult. Our seventh graders have a new appreciation of what Ellis Island is and provides for us in school. Once I realized that you had taken up a new role as the Chairman of the Board of The Statue of LibertyEllis Island Foundation, I said we must have a chat.

Soham: Tell us what you have been doing since your time at Allen-Stevenson. At that point, my wife reminded me that I didn’t want to just work in business – I wanted a more dynamic career. She told me that I should find a job in the non-profit sector, so I became the head of a very large non-profit, The Ford Foundation, which had me moving back to New York. I ran The Ford Foundation at a really important time, during the 2008 financial crisis. I was able to take the organization through the crisis and make sure it came out the other side healthy and prepared for the future. I’m very proud of that work.

Seven years later, with the crisis over and having turned 50, I decided not to take another job. Instead, I decided to focus on doing work across sectors, in government, non-profit and business.

DK: Perhaps I could interject and say, one of the things I like about these meetings between alumni and boys is that they start to think, ‘Well, he did that…maybe I can do that.’

Luis Ubinas ’78: I can’t begin to describe what happened after until I talk about how wonderful an opportunity attending AllenStevenson was.

I loved my time at A-S. When I was at AllenStevenson, I was very poor, and living in the South Bronx, which was unfathomably dangerous at the time. A-S was the first place that served as a safe haven for me – in large measure thanks to great teachers, like Mr. Kersey.

After Allen-Stevenson, I went to Collegiate, Harvard College, then Harvard Business School. I worked for two years at Booz, Allen, a consulting firm, then, after graduate school, went to work at McKinsey, another consulting firm. I like to describe consulting as being a doctor for companies: we would go and make companies better. Sometimes that meant helping companies Soham: Yea – it’s inspiring.

LU: Let me just give you a few better examples between the different sectors: government, non-profit and private. In the non-profit sector, I’m on the Board of the New York Public Library. I run the Finance Committee, so we have to make decisions like how much are we going to spend on rebuilding buildings, how many hours are we going to stay open, how many books are we going to buy? It’s really exciting. We can do things like reminding ourselves that many of the libraries in New York’s poorer neighborhoods are too small and, in some cases, run down. We are renovating many of those libraries in low-income neighborhoods.

In the government sector, I was on the United States Trade Commission during the Obama administration. On this Commission, you can help people think about how to treat other countries in their trade relationships. For example, it turns out the Chinese were stealing a lot of our digital ideas and making copycat versions. The Board asked the Trade Commissioner to have a conversation with China, so they would stop doing that.

Sebastian: You talked about the non-profit and government sectors. Which one did you like more?

LU: Well, truthfully, what I like most is working across sectors. It forces you to learn how to work with very different people with very different motivations. By learning to be flexible, it makes you more effective in each of the sectors.

William: You described your library as a ‘palace of books’. How do you feel about the Public Library, and why do you think we need it in New York?

LU: The first answer is, there are times when there isn’t a single bookstore in the lower-income parts of the Bronx. So, when you think about accessing books, libraries play an important role. In fact, that’s why Andrew Carnegie and others founded and expanded the New York Public Library system over 100 years ago. Back then, there were hardly any bookstores or ways to get books, so having a system of libraries available was revolutionary.

The second answer is that the books from the library are free. You can go into the library, pick something you’d like to read, sign it out and leave the library with it. There are millions of books from which to choose. Some people can’t afford books; it’s easy to forget.

The third answer is that the library is a public space. It doesn’t matter who you are; you can just walk into the library and be welcome. If a book on the shelf interests you, you can ask to borrow it and take it home. And it’s not just books. The library is a place you can go to study in a safe, warm environment, or a place you can access the internet or use a computer, if you don’t have one.

That’s why the library and public spaces are so important.

William: So, you’re basically saying that the library is also an escape from reality while also providing knowledge.

LU: Exactly!

DK: I used to go with boys to Ellis Island on the Circle Line before they redid it. There were ghosts, and paint was peeling; you couldn’t even go into half of it. It was structurally unsound. But there were some park service people there to help. It had such resonance then — signs in Yiddish.

Sebastian: You’ve recently taken on the position as the Chairman of the Board of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. What does this position entail?

LU: The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are government properties. The government does a good job of taking care of the day-to-day, but they haven’t always had the money to preserve those spaces. The Foundation was started in the 1980s because the Statue of Liberty was in danger. I was told that the arm of the Statue was years away from falling off! It’s made out of copper and had been sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean’s salty air for 100 years. The Foundation rebuilt the Statue

and made it safe. Once that was done, it took on the work of Ellis Island. As Mr. Kersey described it, the main building had a tree growing out of the middle of it. The Foundation renovated the entire building. Since then, the Foundation has continued these projects.

Our most recent project is a new museum on the Statue of Liberty. The museum is important because it clarifies the initial intent of the Statue of Liberty. Most people think of the Statue of Liberty as a beacon to immigration. However, the Statue was originally built - soon after the Civil War - as a monument of liberty and marks the end of slavery. In fact, if you could stand at the base of the statue, at her feet, you would see broken shackles. When we designed the museum, we made sure to reclaim that original narrative of the Statue.

Of course, the Statue has also become a monument to our shared immigrant past, but, first, it signified the freedom of American slaves.

Ellis Island is different. It reminds us of the fact that America takes people from all over the world and turns them into Americans. All of us, all of us immigrants, share a common narrative: we all come from somewhere to make this country a little bit better, whether those who long ago cross the land bridge from central Asia or the most recent immigrant from Central America.

The Ellis Island story mostly focuses on European immigration, but it is the national museum for immigration. The Foundation is thinking about how we make Ellis Island more evocative of that broader idea. We want to take Ellis Island forward to the idea that America is a welcoming place built by the people whom it welcomes.

William: That reminds me of The Colossus of Rhodes. It’s similar to the Statue of Liberty –the statue is holding a torch, but on the back has a weapon. It signifies that although we have freedom, we have still been under attack and have to fight back. What do you think of this?

LU: The Statue of Liberty is all there to be seen – it’s a reminder that America is a beacon of freedom. It’s that idea that made it an immigration symbol. When we broke off those shackles, we were able to make real the aspiration of freedom for all.

Sebastian: What was your motivation for joining The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation?

LU: I always ask the question, what am I going to do next with my time? I decide by thinking about what a difference an organization will make in my life and what a difference I will make in the life of the organization. I ask myself, ‘Does what I’m going to do have an impact at scale?’ and ‘does it match a deep personal interest of mine?’. As a member of a migrant family who came from Puerto Rico to the United States and faced the challenges so many others have faced when they came here, the idea of immigration matters to me.

Sebastian: You said that you’re also on the Board of EA and the New York Public Library. Is the motivation for those organizations similar? LU: That’s a great question! I’m on the Board of the New York Public Library because the only books I could have when I was younger came from the library. We didn’t have a bookstore, and I didn’t have money to buy books. I read a lot, and it was all thanks to the New York Public Library.

When I joined EA, they were making lots of changes and those changes have transformed the company. Just a few year ago what we sold were plastic boxes with video games in them, now we are an interwoven global community of gamers.

All the companies I have the honor of working with are undergoing fundamental change, companies that are going to be different in the near future.

When you live in a world where you’re moving from a place like the South Bronx to a place like Allen-Stevenson every morning, one of the things you learn is how to navigate change and difference. In a world where things are changing as rapidly as they are today, learning how to navigate change and difference is a blessing.

DK: Going back to Ellis Island for a moment, we’re lucky because we can just go and visit Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty. Well, kids in California can’t do that. So how do you reach out to them because Ellis Island is important to all of them?

And secondly, we make use of the ship manifests in our history class. I wonder what other treasures can be found in the Ellis Island archives.

LU: We just relaunched our website, which now has learning tools and the beginnings of curricular material. We’re making ourselves a learning source, and we are adding tools, including study guides – material that helps students understand immigration, messages of liberty, what America means. You can be in Alaska or Nigeria and learn about what these symbols mean and what America means.

We’re building educational materials so that if you’re teaching an American history class and get to the section on immigration, you can go to our website, and for free, get content that we’ve developed around those ideas.

Adrian: What are your plans for the future of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation? Is there anything you think you can change for the better or make Ellis Island more beneficial to students?

LU: Our last Board meeting was exclusively on the topic you just raised. We’re thinking about Ellis Island – it’s 30 years old and needs to be refreshed. We’re going to redesign it in a way that reflects the broader idea of American immigration.

DK: I have seen the film, Island of Hope, Island of Tears, that has been on the Ellis Island website forever with Gene Hackman. As soon as he opens his mouth, I tear up. And I’ve seen it with the students a million times.

LU: You make a good point. You have to find ways to make changes that respect what is and what was. The most successful change has as its foundation what was not just what will be.

Ishaan: Both of these monuments were symbols of freedom and welcoming immigrants in the New York Harbor to America. Do you still believe we are a nation of immigrants? Are we still a nation that welcomes outsiders today?

LU: I know we’ve had a hard time in this country during the last four years. If I had a seventh grader today, one of the saddest things for me would be knowing that in key years of their development all they heard about America was how unwelcoming it is. But the reality is that over time this country has gone through other periods of being unwelcoming. But we always find our way. Ours is a narrative of both challenge and acceptance.

DK: I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think we’re getting close to the end and again I wanted to thank you for doing this.

LI: I’m happy to do anything you’ll ever ask me.

DK: Thank you, Luis. Maybe one more question. I think the boys want to about your time at Allen-Stevenson…

LU: I loved Allen-Stevenson. It wasn’t easy— it was hard to go from the South Bronx to the Upper Eastside every morning. But AllenStevenson, for me, was a great place where I’ve made lifelong friends. Roberto De Vido ’78, one of my classmates, I spoke with yesterday. We were fifth graders together. These friends you have now with boys and young men will grow, and someday you will be older men together. Enjoy your time at Allen-Stevenson because you’re in a special place.

Interview with some 7th-grade boys