Alejandra Campoverdi joined TheStreet to discuss her new memoir, her early relationship with money and the resources young first generation Americans need to succeed.
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00:00 me about the process of writing this book, Alejandra, and what you want readers to take
00:04 away from really this incredible story that you sought to tell.
00:07 Well, it is a memoir, but I keep saying that it's more than that, because the idea is to
00:12 have a broad examination of the emotional toll of social mobility on first-generation
00:17 young people.
00:18 And what I wanted to do with this is really catalyze a conversation around this topic
00:22 and normalize the first-gen experience, which is so much more nuanced than we give it credit
00:27 for.
00:28 What did your relationship with money look like at a young age?
00:33 Some of those values or conversations instilled to you in terms of even things like basic
00:37 financial literacy in your household and how you think maybe that might have been a little
00:41 bit different from any of your peers in school or in your friend groups who maybe were not
00:46 first-generation.
00:47 Well, I love the diplomacy, because as you know from reading the book, our relation with
00:50 money was try to find some and hold onto it for as long as possible.
00:53 My family immigrated a few years before I was born from Mexico, but there were times
00:58 when I was on public assistance when I was a child.
01:00 And I talk about in the book, you know, opening the fridge and there was only food in one
01:04 little section marked with my name on it, right?
01:07 Because it was very much trying to pay the rent and then stretch the rest of the money
01:10 for the rest of the month, right?
01:13 So as I went through my career and I went to college and I started having a different
01:17 relationship with money, it still was something fraught.
01:21 And when we look at the relationship that first-gen young people have with money, it
01:25 is one of financial trauma.
01:27 This is not a cozy conversation around the dinner table kind of thing.
01:31 What are some of the kind of cultural expectations on your own view of finance that you think
01:35 might surprise someone else who is either learning about your journey in the form of
01:39 the interviews that you're doing or really maybe picking up your book and learning a
01:42 lot more about you and your story for the first time?
01:45 Well, the idea of investing, right, that isn't something that there's a lot of fluency in,
01:50 right?
01:51 And so it's hold onto money, you know, find, get a good job, hold onto that job, don't
01:55 necessarily like move around.
01:57 And you know, the idea was a scarcity mindset, I guess that's the best way to put it.
02:02 And as you know, as you know, the scarcity mindset is not how you're going to be able
02:06 to build generational wealth for your families.
02:09 And that's something that's uniquely put on the shoulders of first-generation young people.
02:13 One thing I talk about is the breakaway guilt of coming home after going to these institutions
02:18 and places and getting these degrees and you make more money than anyone in your family.
02:22 And the feeling of, oh my God, my life changed and no one else did.
02:26 How am I going to help them?
02:29 50% of first-generation students while they're in school feel responsible financially for
02:34 their family members.
02:36 Think about that and think about your own college experiences.
02:39 It was at the case and what kind of burden is that?
02:43 One third of all college students in the US are first-generation students, yet only 27%
02:47 of first-gen students finish college within four years.
02:51 What do you think needs to change in order to get more students the support that they
02:54 need?
02:55 Well, the number one thing in our poll that students asked for was not academic support.
02:59 It was mental health support.
03:02 So this is an optimistic, almost blindly audacious group of high achievers, right?
03:08 But they get to these systems and they don't have the support emotionally to be able to
03:13 navigate through this.
03:14 And this may sound like soft skills and so on, but as we all know, you can be getting
03:20 straight A's, you can be the top person at your company, but if you don't feel that you
03:24 have the community and the resources around you to be able to succeed, it's really difficult.
03:29 And so I really think, and not even beyond what I think, the students told us that what
03:33 they need are mental health services that are culturally competent on their campuses.
03:38 And what that looks like is some schools that I've talked to actually have this, have a
03:42 dedicated psychologist on campus for their first-generation students to help them navigate
03:47 this, have integrated mental health therapy sessions integrated into their college campus.
03:56 This is again, maybe a holistic way that people don't think about this topic, but this is
04:01 what they're saying that they need.
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