The city’s new director of Latino engagement is an unfamiliar face, but other Latino leaders have high hopes for him

On Tuesday, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker announced that her office had created a new position in the city’s government — director of Latino engagement. The man appointed to this position is William Garcia, who Parker said has been working in Philly’s Latino community for two decades.

Yet it’s unclear what exactly the new role will involve. Garcia, 41, has worked primarily at Esperanza Academy Charter School and is unknown to many from the growing population of Philadelphians. And the city did not respond to requests for comment on how he was chosen, why the new position was created, or what his precise responsibilities will be.

Who is William Garcia, and what will he do in this new role?

Garcia was born and raised in Philadelphia, growing up in Nicetown with nine siblings and currently lives in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia. His parents are both originally from Puerto Rico.

Garcia has not worked in government until now. He said he was approached about the position, which has a salary of $90,000, by Brenda Ríos, the associate deputy mayor of intergovernmental and legislative affairs, sustainability and engagement, whom he knew from church.

For the last 20 years, Garcia worked for Esperanza Academy Charter School in different roles; first as an ESL instructor, then as an administrative assistant working on student development, and since 2021, he was an operations manager for Esperanza’s middle school building in Hunting Park.

“The Latino community here in Philadelphia, it’s where I live, it’s where I serve,” Garcia said.

He also has been involved with the city’s Latino evangelical church community, serving as a pastor-minister at Iglesia Evangelica Cristiana Ebenezer in Kensington from 2013 to 2023. He is currently a pastor with St. Phillips United Methodist Church, also in Kensington.

“We saw him grow up, literally,” said the Rev. Luis Cortés Jr., the founder, president, and CEO of Esperanza. His wife was Garcia’s second- and third-grade teacher, and Cortés got to know him through church events over the years when he was a child. Now, after Garcia has worked for him at Esperanza for 20 years, Cortés said he is happy for Garcia, even though he is losing a “great employee.”

“He’s very hardworking, he’s very smart, he knows how to work with our community,” he said. “You need people that have humility and are willing to serve even when things are rough.”

“He has a servant heart,” said the Rev. Bonnie Camarda, an Esperanza board member and former pastor in North Philly. She has known Garcia for many years through the Philadelphia Association of United Church of Christ, and believes he is an ideal fit for the job.

“I think that’s why he will be good at bringing people together, because he’s from the neighborhood. Those things count,” she said.

Some leaders, many who work with Philadelphia’s Latino immigrant community, said they had not yet worked with Garcia and looked forward to collaborating with him.

“I don’t recall working with him … I look forward to meeting him and working for the good of our community,” the Rev. Adán Mairena, the pastor of West Kensington Ministry in Norris Square, said via Facebook Messenger.

The Rev. Jessie Alejandro, vicar of the Church of the Crucifixion in South Philadelphia, said she is “hoping that he’ll be a great asset to the community.”

Alejandro said she isn’t concerned by Garcia’s lack of government experience; she’s more interested in what his personality and ability to lead will be. “It doesn’t concern me as long as the job gets done. I think that’s what’s more important … that people get heard and that he’s able to engage with the community,” she said.

Msgr. Hugh Shields, a retired priest formerly of St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic parish in South Philly and the Archdiocesan Office for Hispanic Catholics, who still meets buses of immigrants arriving in Philadelphia, said he hopes that anyone in charge of Latino engagement understands that authority does not necessarily make someone a leader; their qualities do.

“Independence. And at the same time, [having] a tremendous amount of ability to collaborate, to listen the minority opinion expressed by others,” he said.

Edgar Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant and the founder of Philatinos Radio — which serves the Latino immigrant community in South Philly — said he would like for Garcia to bridge language barriers between the city and first generation immigrants and other Latinos so they can better understand what the government is doing and why.

“Not knowing how the system works, it has been very difficult,” he said.

Garcia said that he intends to become a familiar face who community members can trust.

“My first plan is just to reach out, visit, speak with them, gauge their understanding of what’s the mayor’s vision for our city and for our Latino community.”

Even though Garcia is relatively unknown within the city’s Latino community, people have high hopes for his appointment.

“[I was] impressed. [He’s] ready to rumble and stand up for the community,” said Will Gonzalez, executive director of Ceiba, a coalition of Latino community organizations, who met Garcia for the first time at City Hall on Tuesday.

“He knows what the needs of the community firsthand are,” he said.

Gonzalez appreciated that Garcia had experience with and the backing of several bedrock Philly Latino institutions, like Esperanza and certain clergy members.

“Mayor Parker said [this position will] be the bridge between city officials and the Latino community … I hope that this position will help me take that information to our clergy members and our other stakeholders and community leaders so that our community can benefit,” Garcia said.

Gonzalez sees Garcia’s lack of experience in a positive light — he believes it is important for the city and the Latino community to continue developing new, younger leaders.

“That it is a young person will be around hopefully for the next 20, 30 years, not somebody who is doing this at the end of their career. This is somebody who’s doing it at the beginning of their career and that is called leadership development. So I like that,” he said.

Alejandro agrees.

“It’s always good to bring new faces and new people to come [to lead],” she said.

Camarda said she is looking for Garcia to bridge the disparate, non-monolithic groups and neighborhoods that make up Philly’s Latino community. While she and other leaders see the value and strength of having separate Mexican, Venezuelan, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and other Latino communities, she would like for them find more alignment and connection with each other to uplift the collective group.

“My hope is that we can bring the Latino community together, no matter where we come from. We’ve been very segmented for years,” she said. “It’s important to unify the community. And he’s young, I think he can do that.”

Shields would like to see those connections built even within immigrant communities. He said that he can sometimes feel a distance between newly arriving people, and those who immigrated years ago.

“[I hope] that role would also help the community … to see those coming, whether they be Latino or whoever they might be, as brothers and sisters and be able to help them into the great city of Philadelphia, the services of Philadelphia, and to do it with respect and dignity.”

Garcia himself says he believes this isn’t a job that he can do alone, and plans to work collaboratively with community members and government officials to build the bridge he’s been tasked with constructing.

“I am not a politician. I’m a public servant,” he said.