Christina Moreno’s incredible energy and unswerving determination to define her own path to success, have propelled her from a single teenage mum living in poverty in the US to an international lawyer based in the Hague. Two years ago Christina Moreno founded She Matters an innovative organisation designed to find employment for female refugees in the Netherlands. Her refusal to see refugees as victims but rather as an untapped source of talent and skills has earned her the interest of both national governments and large corporates. What is the secret of her success?
I met Christina Moreno two years ago just as she was starting She Matters. At the time, I was struck by her energy and incredibly positive outlook. A petit, well-groomed Latina woman, her open, friendly manner and modesty belied the kind of steely strength that one sees more frequently in Hollywood movies like Erin Brockovich. I interviewed Christina for a local radio programme and we agreed to stay in touch so that we could follow her story. NGOs are a dime a dozen here in the international City of Peace and Justice. Although their causes are unquestionably worthy, steady funding is a perennial problem. Particularly for those that have yet to establish themselves. But Christina Moreno chose to give up her job as an international lawyer and use her savings to begin She Matters. I did not know it at the time, but this was not the first time in her life that Christina chose to defy the odds.
‘She motivated me to change my life’ – Christina Moreno
Christina Moreno comes from a fourth generation Mexican-American family. She was one of five. Her father was a military man and her mother didn’t reach 8th grade at school. Christina left school at age 16 and by 18 was the single mother of young son, Armando. She was living in poverty and was dependent on welfare benefits from the state. She had no qualifications and was struggling to find even a part-time job. Christina tells me this matter-of-factly. There is no self-pity, only an admission that, statistically speaking, her chances of changing her life of poverty were extremely slim.
This was brought home to Christina one day when she went to visit her case worker at the local welfare office. The woman explained to her that she needed to find a job. Christina, her young son on her lap, told the case worker that she had always wanted to be a lawyer. She vividly recalls how the woman laughed at her and explained that that wasn’t going to work for her anymore. Instead she handed her a bunch of applications for a checkout girl at Walmart and similar positions.
‘They don’t know what I’m capable of’ – Christina Moreno
‘I remember clearly my initial feeling of embarrassment’, Christina tells me. But later, sitting on the bus on the way home, she recalls a growing feeling of anger, of fighting spirit rising within her. ‘ I remember thinking that she doesn’t know me or what I’m capable of. I thought, wait a minute, I have one life, this is mine and no one else’s. No one can take this away from me.’ Christina enrolled in a local technical college and gained the necessary skills that would allow her to work in a call center.
And this is exactly what she did. All the way through night school, where she earned her associate’s degree and then transferred to university to study for her Bachelor’s and finally her Master’s degree. Through a lot of hard work and coffee, as she puts it, Christina earned her law degree in 2013. ‘ I really thank her because she motivated me to change my life. She was the push I needed. ‘ Christina says of the case worker. This sort of modesty is typical of the She Matters founder. I asked her how she found the strength to continue for 12 years of unstinting effort as an employee, student and mother.
‘My son deserved better than this’ – Christina Moreno
‘There were many people along my journey who discouraged me from doing what I wanted to do. But I didn’t want my son to feel that it was normal to go to the welfare office. It was something I felt as a mother. There was really no choice.’ She explains how she felt that as a woman, society was telling her what her place was. ‘I felt that is not fair, that’s not right.’
Asked who was a source of inspiration to her on her journey, Christina replies without hesitation: ‘My grandmother – I love her to death!’ She lives in California and although she’s been there many years she doesn’t speak English. ‘I would always gravitate toward her’, she recalls. ‘To me she was just this beautiful woman.’ The international lawyer remembers how every evening around six, as it was getting dark, her grandmother would take a shower and then get ready for work. She recalls the care with which she would apply her make-up and dress. I thought she was the president of a company or something like that. It was only later that I found out she worked at a pistachio company, sorting nuts. The experience taught her at a young age how important a job is for one’s self-respect.
‘I think people can see themselves as victims or else you can turn that around and say, this is my situation and I’m going to make it better. I see this every day in the women I work with.’ I ask Christina about her decision to start She Matters. She explains how it all began with a talk she gave for an organisation called The Hague Talks, about inclusive justice. It was the first time Christina told her own story of working her way out of poverty. It was also inspired by the changes in immigration law instigated by the Trump administration. Such changes spoke to her on both a personal and professional level: coming from a family of immigrants herself and as an international lawyer who saw how these new proposals broke with decades of international law, designed to protect the world’s most vulnerable.
They all told me, ‘I want a job’. – Christina Moreno
Christina spent a week researching the refugee crisis from a legal perspective, in preparation for her talk. She describes it as a changing point in her life as she simply ‘became hooked’. ‘I knew I didn’t want to stop there.’ Afterwards, three women approached her. Refugees themselves from Syria and Afghanistan. They invited her for coffee but when she arrived they had prepared a table full of food. ‘I was so humbled by that’, Christina recalls. But when they told her their stories, she was moved to tears.
‘I couldn’t imagine being locked in a room for weeks and not being able to feed your baby.’ It was not pity however that moved her to tears, but the strength of these women that was so moving to her. ‘They asked me why I was crying and explained that it was all behind them now. They no longer thought about it. They were in a new country, with a new life and what they really wanted was a job.’ Christina recalls how she heard the same thing from many women whom she met over the coming months. They wanted jobs more than anything. She realised that she wanted to make a contribution, but how?
‘I didn’t see parasites, I saw fighters’- Christina Moreno
Christina continued her research. She went out into the Hague community, attended refugee events and spoke with the people who many ignore under a convenient blanket of pity. She was struck by two things. Firstly, the number of men at these events. Women were seldom seen. Secondly, the shame that many felt at being refugees. Many told her that they did not feel comfortable living on welfare payments from the government but had little choice given the difficulty of finding employment. Christina tells me that when she met these people, she didn’t see parasites, she saw fighters. People who wanted to contribute and fight for a better future.
This petite Latina powerhouse knew she wanted to help the women but at first she couldn’t find them! She had founded She Matters as an NGO, given up her job and taken out her savings to finance a 12 week pilot programme called the Lotus Flower. Research shows that employers are primarily concerned about soft skills when employing refugees. With a maximum of 10 participants this programme was designed to foster inter- cultural communication, gender norms, basic interview skills and similar. The programme was free for attendees. Christina expected to be flooded with interest but with just one week remaining, only one woman had registered!
‘We have grown so fast, so quickly!’ – Christina Moreno
What to do? Following advice from local NGOs and refugee centres, Christina went to the playgrounds and coffee mornings for mums. With backpack and duffel coat she set out to persuade these women to give the programme a try. Many were initially reserved and a little suspicious. Why should this woman, who wasn’t even Dutch herself, be willing to help them? Christina realised that she had to win their trust. The first week they had 4 women attend the programme and by the end there were a total of 7. From these shaky beginnings, they have completed three Lotus Flower programmes since.
She Matters has grown at a phenomenal pace in the last 2 years. It is now both a registered company and an NGO. This means that once the women graduate from the 12 week training course, they switch over to the recruitment side of She Matters. Here, they are placed with a company in the manner of a normal recruitment agency. Christina admits that for many companies the idea of hiring a refugee outside of the traditional Corporate Social Responsibility framework is new and takes some adjustment. In order to facilitate trust, she tells me that She Matters now uses a 500 question self-assessment tool from HR Tech, one of their partners. It measures a candidate’s cognitive abilities and emotional stability with 87% accuracy. This data driven approach together with the support of large corporates like Salesforce NL have helped her company win the confidence of other potential clients.
Christina is now looking for investment so that she can upscale and build capacity to deal with the growing number of women. They are focusing on Engineering, ICT and Pharmaceutical sectors. ICT in particular is a huge growth industry. She Matters has recently partnered with Codam an innovative, new coding college that gives one the opportunity to teach themselves to code. Many of the women they work with come from Syria and attended university there. ‘Most of the women speak better Dutch than me. It’s a waste to be driving taxis if you have a degree in Engineering’.
How do we change the way we look at refugees and NGOs?
The She Matters business model is not only about becoming a self-sustaining NGO, it underpins a deeper ideological drive to create a paradigm shift in how refugees are perceived. Traditionally refugees have been seen as a drain on society. But Christina is confident that if we nurture this untapped pool of talent and skills, our societies will be richer for it. Women often lie at the center of family life hence her decision to focus on empowering female refugees. When the initiative was just a week old, they were told they had reached the semi-finals of the TED ex Amsterdam Women’s Start-up Award. This forced Christina to think very carefully about both their business plan and business model.
This same model is now garnering interest from the French and Belgian governments. Christina tells me that she has been asked if she would be interested in bringing She Matters to these countries. It is early days yet but defying the odds is what Christina Moreno has always done. I suspect she will continue to do so long into the future.
Up next on Souwie on …
Ahmad Joudeh, Syrian dancer.