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Steam rises from the pavement, escaping from beneath manhole covers as the first vehicles arrive. It’s still dark before sunrise as huge trucks convene from every direction. They’ve crisscrossed the nation to arrive and pick up produce. Immigrants from nearby communities sell plátanos, customers jockey for position, deals are done in cash, and vendors are trying to figure out how to make a dollar and stand out from the crowd.
The Bronx Terminal Market—La Marqueta—of the 1970s is no place for a child, but inside one of the pickup trucks sits the young Alejandra Y. Castillo. She’s there most mornings with her father, a Dominican who fled his country’s oppressive regimes and settled in Queens, New York, and he owned and operated a store in the Bronx. Accompanying him to buy produce let Castillo observe the dynamics of informal and formal economies and sparked in her an unending curiosity about financial structures and systems. Nearly five decades later in 2021, she would be confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as US assistant secretary of commerce for economic development.
“I’ve had to learn to bridge two countries, two cultures, two socioeconomic realities, and two understandings of what it means to be Latin American wherever I am.”
Alejandra Y. Castillo
It was a big moment for Castillo, for the country, and for Latinas. As she stood before Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Castillo, who had already held leadership positions in the Obama and Clinton administrations, became the first woman of color appointed to the position.
Castillo’s appointment doesn’t represent the only time she’s been a “first.” In fact, it’s happened quite often in her professional and personal life. She was the first in her family to learn English and the first in her family to earn a university degree. In 2014, she became the first Hispanic woman to lead the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency. “Standing in these roles is an honor, and I know I can raise the voices of people who have been absent from these conversations,” she says.
In many ways, her current role is a culmination of not only the experienced public administrator’s career but her entire life. “I’ve always tried to build bridges and create change,” Castillo says. “I’ve had to learn to bridge two countries, two cultures, two socioeconomic realities, and two understandings of what it means to be Latin American wherever I am.”
In 1980, when Castillo was just eleven years old, her family moved back to the Dominican Republic in the wake of the previous year’s Hurricane David. Although she didn’t yet speak Spanish well, she got a second education in dealmaking and finance as she watched her father establish an import-export business. When he died two years later, she was thrust early into adulthood.
The foundation of Castillo’s career was established as she earned her master’s degree in public policy and learned from giants of the US Senate as a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Fellow with the office of Senator Ted Kennedy. Castillo says her family’s journey motivated her as she rose through the ranks.
“Standing in these roles is an honor, and I know I can raise the voices of people who have been absent from these conversations.”
Alejandra Y. Castillo
“My parents showed me the strength and power of democracy in the United States, and I wanted to use my education and time to build a great legacy,” she explains. Castillo has since held many prominent positions, and they’ve all been anchored around creating community solutions and serving distressed and underrepresented populations.
Now as head of the Economic Development Administration, Castillo is tasked with implementing the $3 billion in funding from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. She’s focused on identifying the projects that will make the biggest social impact in communities. “We’re looking for bold and innovative ideas to create the economies of the future,” she says.
The Biden Administration designed its American Rescue Plan to help the nation recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, and Castillo has to make sure her office administers funding in an equitable and sustainable way. That requires her to bring to bear all of her lived experience and once again build bridges—this time between the public and private sectors.
Castillo is passionate about her projects, big and small. She knows just one new road can bring traffic to a downtown redevelopment while large business incubators can help entire regions flourish. All she has to do to see the impact of her work is look at a map and remember the literal and figurative bridges she’s helped build all across the United States.
