Juan Figueroa’s first job with a real paycheck put him on a boat in the middle of a pond in Haverstraw, N.Y., a blue- collar town on the Hudson River.
At age 14 or 15, he was tasked with cleaning up a polluted pond, fishing washing machines and tires out of the water. It was the late-1960s, and it was really the beginning of environmental consciousness, Figueroa recalled.
“It was intense. It was hard work. It was stinky work,” he said with a laugh. “It was great making some real money.”
Born and raised in Ciales, Puerto Rico, Figueroa’s experience that summer put him thousands of miles away from home.
“I think that’s probably a factor in my willingness to branch out and be independent,” Figueroa said.
And it made it that much easier for him to hop on a plane in 1971 and head to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
During his college years, he did electrical work around campus and worked at a Ford factory — nothing that related to what he studied. But the work generated some money, while his education paved the path to his future.
For six months during college, Figueroa participated in an internship that taught community organization skills through his work for a public housing project in St. Paul.
“Organizational training … has given me a basic set of skills that has allowed me to function really well in all the jobs that I’ve had,” Figueroa said.
After graduation, he married his college sweetheart and moved to New Hampshire, where he worked in a factory until he landed a job with an organization serving the emerging Latino community in the state.
From there, it was law school in California, a new baby, a cross-country move to Connecticut, the state attorney general’s office, the state legislature and a decade in Manhattan, where he served as president and general counsel for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Figueroa and his family enjoyed the experience, which thrust him onto a national stage, but when the offer came from the Universal Health Care Foundation, he snatched it.
“It was focusing in on an issue that has become a major domestic issue that … everybody’s sort of wrestling with,” Figueroa said. “This is the first time I’ve worked from the perch of a foundation, where there are some real resources to be employed.”
