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Hispanic Executive’s mission is to unite the leaders of the new majority by turning a spotlight on our community’s most influential Latinos. We tell stories about Latinos and for Latinos.
Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement (VIDA)’s Felida Villarreal returns for our Visibility Series to speak with Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation (HF). Miranda, who stepped into the role in December 2019, is the first openly gay president of the New York City-based nonprofit membership organization.
He last spoke with Hispanic Executive in 2023 as part of our In Plain Sight series about how he uses his life experiences to bring a new perspective to the leadership of HF, which celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2025. Miranda first joined HF in 1998 and has held various leadership positions throughout his tenure, playing a key role in expanding the organization’s operations into Florida, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Illinois.
In this exclusive interview with Villarreal, Miranda speaks on the importance of coalition building to support the Latino community, how nonprofit leaders can maintain resilience and motivation, and how his leadership and HF has supported the LGBTQ+ community.
To learn more about the Hispanic Federation, go to hispanicfederation.org.
Interview Transcript
Felida Villareal
So, thank you for joining me today, Frankie. As leaders of organizations dedicated to empowering Latino communities, I am excited to have this conversation about your journey, Hispanic Federation’s impact, and the future of our sector. Your work has been truly inspirational, particularly in how you’ve guided the organization through recent challenges while expanding its outreach and impact.
And speaking from impactful journeys, I’d love to start at the beginning of yours. Could you share with us about your journey within the nonprofit sector and public service? What inspired and drove you to serve Latino communities and Latino led causes from such an early age?
Frankie Miranda
Well, thank you. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Well, it is, it is an interesting question because being in nonprofits was never the master plan. I kind of, like, stumbled into this important work through the work that I was doing when I was younger, through the arts. I was always interested in the arts. More specifically theater during my high school years. It was really a source of inspiration and a lot of the community work that I was doing at the time. And then when I went into college. That work continues in Puerto Rico, and I’m talking about, back in the ’90s in Puerto Rico.
And then, when I had the opportunity to move to New York to pursue my master’s degree, I was looking for an opportunity that will give me some sort of, like, an opportunity to mix my interests in this in social sciences and also in theater arts. And I found a fantastic program at NYU called Performance Studies. Had an amazing experience there in New York City leading for the first time, in this very, I will say, very inspiring environment. And then, the fact is that I was offered the PhD track, which was part of the master plan, but I ran out of money. So I said, ‘What am I going to do now? Do I go back to Puerto Rico, or do I stay in New York for a little bit?’ And then I say, like, ‘I’m going to stay in New York for, let’s say, a couple of years, and if things don’t go well, then, I am going to just go back to Puerto Rico.’ But during that time, that’s when I was because of the work in theater troupes here in New York, in New York City.
That’s when I was introduced to my first real job, in the nonprofit world, which was at the Hispanic Federation, back in 1998. My first job in the nonprofits was formal job. The Hispanic Federation, they saw in me that I had a passion, that I had a drive and that I had potential. And I really appreciated that because for the most part, nonprofit organizations in the Latino community are the ones who are giving so many people opportunities in many different communities across the country.
So I am part of one of those people.
Felida Villareal
That’s incredible. And I think those are some of the most, rewarding journeys where you start off in a certain career path and then you end up in the public or nonprofit sector. I think that’s just a really rewarding experience.
Frankie Miranda
Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that is really important about that, for me, it was the nonprofits constantly are looking for talent and seeing talent and potential in people, like probably other workplaces will have rejected this Puerto Rican young guy with an accent, with a diploma from a who-knows-what-the-hell-is-that type of degree or program or, the question that I was getting at the time is how many, how many words per minute can you type? At that time, there were typewriters on desk. But the Federation, the nonprofits were the ones who say, like, he has potential.
Felida Villareal
That’s awesome. And I think that’s what makes us strong in the nonprofit sector is this diverse pool of talent. That’s amazing. So touching on the Hispanic Federation. It was founded in New York City in 1999 with Luis Miranda Jr., and it continues to be one of the largest Latino empowerment and advocacy organizations in the United States. And this year, I hear you all will be celebrating your 35th anniversary. So congratulations. And like you mentioned, you’ve been at the organization since 1998. How have you seen the organization successfully evolve over the years? How have you as a leader evolved alongside Hispanic Federation?
Frankie Miranda
Well, thank you. In 1998, the funny story for funny true story. Luis Miranda. So [he] was the one who gave me that opportunity [at] the Hispanic Federation. And during my first staff meeting was when Luis Miranda announced that he was leaving the Federation, that he was stepping down as founding president. And, that, the Federation was going to continue doing the amazing work, but under the leadership, at that time became Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, our second president of the Hispanic Federation. So during these years, it was very unique. The history of the organization because the organization started in 1990 out of the concern that New York City was a federated town, that many different groups had their nonprofit organizations represented by an umbrella organization, but there was not an umbrella organization advocating for more resources and more opportunities for the nonprofit sector to grow in New York City.
So in 1990, Luis Miranda and a few other leaders had the vision of creating this umbrella organization. And with a handful of organizations, they started the Hispanic Federation of New York City. What the purpose of the organization was very much of providing capacity building, technical assistance and grand to those direct service providers, health and human service providers in New York City, making sure that those organizations that started in the living room of people concerned about the situation of their neighborhoods or people that were volunteering and said, we need to formalize these organization.
And they got to the point in which they needed resources and learning more how to run organizations or how to grow organization. And that was the idea of Hispanic Federation. With the multitude of organizations, nonprofit in New York City. What how are we going to make sure that these organizations doing incredible work? Incredible, unique work in community was going to be better prepare for going in front of a foundation or being able to apply for funds or being able to be a better candidate for government contracts.
That was the mission and continues to be the mission of the Hispanic Federation. I like to say that we’re interested not in your successes because we know how successful you are. We’re interested in your challenges. How can we ensure that you have a stronger board, that you have a good fundraising operation, that your financials are up to date? That is what really intrigued us at the Hispanic Federation. And of course, out of that started people saying we need the model of the federation in our state, in our area and from being just a handful of organizations in New York City. Today, we are in 42 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands with 750 members and partner organizations doing extraordinary work in communities all across the country.
Felida Villareal
Wow. That’s incredible. You touched. I think it’s important how you touched on challenges and when you took over as president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, you were immediately faced with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. So I’m interested to hear what were some of the key strategies you implemented to sort of navigate the organization through this difficult time?
Frankie Miranda
Well, I want to take a little step back and just share with you and everybody that is listening to us that I’ve been working at the Hispanic Federation for many years. I left and then came back to the federation in 2006, and I have been with the organization since then. And then in late 2019, in December of 2019, the board offered me the position of president of the Hispanic Federation.
Frankie Miranda
And of course, I said no. I didn’t want to leave the fun stuff that I was doing at the Federation, working with programs and working with teams and doing many of the work that we were doing. But the board said, Frankie, don’t worry, 2020 is going to be an easy piece of cake year. You can do this job with your eyes closed and after the holiday break, the first time that I had time to, the first opportunity to meet with the leadership team at the Federation was the earthquake in Puerto Rico. And since 2017, we have been working on the recovery of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma and Maria and a lot response from the federal government to those American citizens that happen to live in the island of Puerto Rico. So we mobilized resources. We mobilized, an incredible group of people to help Puerto Rico out of these incredible, incredible natural disaster that was affecting my family there and many of the people that I loved.
So that means that I become president of the Hispanic Federation. And on my first day, we need to restart all this network of care that we have created in Puerto Rico after the hurricanes to support those affected by the earthquakes. And then a few weeks later, it was the lockdown in New York City. So you can imagine I was at that moment thinking it’s just like, well, this is not how I planned it. But the organization was ready to act. And what we did, it was that we took a page of that emergency response in Puerto Rico when local government collapsed and the federal government is nowhere to be found. And we use that response to apply it to those affected by the pandemic because we knew that when these emergencies happen, our organizations are asked to do more when they are already under resourced and not having the that all the unlimited funds that they need to do this work.
But our organizations will continue doing it. So immediately we start into action and we started projecting how the pandemic was moving throughout the country, which work the organizations that we’re going to support those most vulnerable. And we provided to do emergency grants to organizations. Many of these grants were not that big, but they were coming at the right time when people were trying to figure out if they needed equipment to work remotely or protective equipment to protect themselves, or was that what their communities needed was cash assistance, rental assistance, food assistance. So we were working with the organizations and going around the country, making sure that the organizations were providing us with the solutions. We were not coming and saying, we are going to fund you for something. Specifically, we were asking them, give us what is your need and we will support that.
And I am proud to say that many organizations credited the Federation’s fast response for their survival, because in that moment they didn’t know how to proceed or if they were going to even survive. While other network of care was being built and other sources of emergency responders were on their way. So I think that the experience in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma and Maria help us, being an organization that is nimble, that is flexible, and that is fast response organization, making sure that we hear from our members and partners and that we meet them where they need us to meet them, not unlike other organizations that will take six, seven months, nine months to do a feasibility study and say, ‘Well, this is only where we are going to be able to support you,’ the Federation is all the way. We want to hear from our organizations, and that’s how we are going to support them.
Felida Villareal
Absolutely. And I actually can personally speak on that. I have the privilege of leading an organization in South Texas called VIDA, and we were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the federation during COVID, and it was a tremendous support to us during that time because, like you mentioned, there was a lot of uncertainty and nobody was really, willing to take that first step or to try to identify what the needs were and at that time, we’re specifically focused on workforce development. And a lot of, you know, the trainings were delayed, the classrooms were being closed due to the pandemic restrictions. And so that grant really helped us transition to that digital learning environment. And so thank you so much to you and the entire leadership to for really, you know, being an advocate for the Latino communities nationwide, because, again, we’re not, we don’t have a presence in New York. Yeah, we, primarily focus in South Texas, but yet your support was tremendous to our sustainability at that time. So thank you.
Frankie Miranda
Thank you so much for the work that you do.
Felida Villareal
Thank you. And speaking of, sustainability, you know, around the nonprofit sector, you know, I think that’s a primary concern all of the time with the limited resources and the high competition. How does the Hispanic Federation ensure that programs are sustainable long term, especially when facing these fluctuating funding sources?
Frankie Miranda
Well, it is, it is, it is the biggest concern, for all nonprofits and for us trying to ensure that there are enough sources of funding for the entire network. I must say that, constantly it is about telling our story and telling our story about in, in a way that people really understand the contributions of our community right now. Unfortunately, there is a lot of a false narrative around our, our communities, very diverse communities, about who we are as people and what are our aspirations. So we’re constantly having to remind people, funders, private companies of the purchasing power of our community, of the economic possibilities and economic mobility and the contributions that our community. So we’re constantly having to speak to funders, trying to make sure that they understand that investing in our communities, it is the right kind of investment that it will have return of investment.
I’m not saying that it is, not important to talk about the humane argument about helping others and helping those people in need, but at the same time, it is important for us to see us as an element of value, an element of positive change, an element of contribution to the arts, to the society, to the economy of this country. So constantly, while we’re trying just to make sure is that people understand that digital scaling for our community, it is good for the country that supporting education in our community is good for the country, that making sure that these programs are sustainable are good for the country.
While we are right now on a few weeks of uncertainty with regards to a new administration and what is going to be the focus of that, all that we have been doing these weeks is to go and advocate in Washington, DC, in with many stakeholders around the country, making sure that companies continue to see the value of diversity, making sure that they don’t rescind many of their commitments that they have made to our community and our sector.
So I will say that this is an everyday conversation. It’s an everyday fight. But that’s why the Federation was created to continue advocating for all the great people and talented people in our sector.
Felida Villareal
Incredible. You know, and as also a nonprofit leader here at VIDA, we are specifically dedicated to expanding workforce and training opportunities to Latino communities. And I’ve personally experienced the transformative power of strategic partnerships. So our collaborations from educational institutions to industry partners and community organizations have been just so key and helping thousands of individuals achieve economic mobility through our career services. Building on this experience, I’d love to hear your perspective, especially like you mentioned during these challenging times, how can nonprofits collaborate more effectively to advance our shared goals?
Frankie Miranda
I think that the one of the tenement of the Hispanic Federation that is so important is coalition building. Many people feel that when there’s scarcity of resources that people need to compete against each other. And what we have seen is that while coalition building is extremely difficult and time consuming, it is an effective way to make the case about the importance of fair resources being distributed in different communities. I feel that, when many of the organizations that we represent have worked independently, many of them are not as successful as when we come in as a group of thirty organizations in one state, being able to go to the state Capitol and advocate for fair resources, or when we’re talking about groups of organizations that are right now working on workforce development and being able to go to a private company and say, ‘Look at these cohorts of organizations. They really deserve an opportunity to all the grants and funds that you have available.’
So it is important for us always to be able to capture the incredible diversity in our community, the incredible stories and work collectively. There are sometimes there’s going to be, we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but we can come out as the strong force for all the sector and for all the organizations. And in my experience, it is extremely, extremely powerful, and we have seen it in many different places where sometimes it is impossible, sometimes close to impossible, to get resources for organizations. But even when you band together, sometimes even from other parts of the country, the funding and the resources come together. It is always talking about the incredible work of, that it is incredible work of those people working in California, in Chicago, in Colorado, in New York, in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, in Florida—it is important for us to band together. And that is one of the reasons that we continue to work so hard every single day, that is, to talk about the members, to talk about the important work that they are doing, and also making sure that people understand the best return on investment is investing in not for profits.
There is no better return on investment because the communities, the benefit state, the country, the multiplying effect of investing dollars in these incredible programs like Be the Workforce Development and others. It is just incredible. So that is why the Federation exists, and that is why, motivate us every single day to tell the story of our members.
Felida Villareal
And I couldn’t agree more. I think, like you mentioned, as one entity or one organization, you’re limited as far as your outreach on your impact. But by working with different partners and stakeholders, we can definitely enhance that impact and reach a much bigger, audience for sure. And so going off on that, obviously the nonprofit sector is incredibly, incredibly demanding from what we said to limited resources to at times, you know, difficulty with retaining talent or, or finding talent. What advice do you have for maintaining resilience and motivate in this line of work?
Frankie Miranda
That is a very important question because, as you can see, I consider myself a pandemic time leader. Right? It was just before the pandemic and the when we went, virtual. We have to … we were not allowed to go to the office. We were having a series of meetings, and I realized that I was looking at people in the left, the small boxes of, you know, many of the employees, in a zoom meeting at a time. And I realized that I couldn’t read their emotions. I felt that I needed to do a wellness check on all of them. One, one by one, being able to talk to them, to call them and basically ask them is like, ‘Are you OK?’ Because while we were very proud that the organization was able to safeguard all our team members during a very difficult time, we knew that they were going through hardship in their families.
Some of them lost family members during these very difficult time where they were worried about other, loved ones in their countries of origin or many parts of the United States. So that was a very good lesson for me as a leader to, active, listen to the team making sure that we are checking on them, that we are people that are constantly, in many cases, living the same circumstances and the challenges that we’re fighting against. These are people that are in community. They have people in community. So for me, it is really important that as a leader that is fighting for the well-being, mental and physical well-being of my community, that I take good care of my community and my community is the members and also the team, the team members of staff at the Hispanic Federation. So in many cases, what we do is that we make sure that we have that one-on-one contact, making sure that we’re checking in with each other.
We establish that we’re going to have what we call sometimes open mics during our staff meetings, in which people can just share and talk to each other, and making sure that we preserve that idea that while we can be working remotely or hybrid or in person, that there is no other way to connect with each other and be a better team. If we don’t care about each other and listen to each other. And another thing that I think that was, really important for morale and in understanding the needs of everybody is that, some of the most important decisions that we have made since I became president of the Hispanic Federation has been made in task forces, a task force created within the organization. And it’s like, this is not what Frankie wants. We want to know that if we’re going to have a hybrid model is because we’re listening to people that have caretaking issues or people that are having anxiety, taking mass transportation, or that they are challenges, economic challenges, because the way that the family has reconfigure after the pandemic is very different from before.
So I think that that is, somebody recently call that and I said, ‘We’re doing that, but I didn’t have that term.’ It’s called it radical listening, making sure that you are listening and making sure that there is change associated to that. And I think that that has being a very good, opportunity to, not only, make sure that everybody’s okay at the Hispanic Federation, but also ensuring that, people retaining people at the Federation and also making sure that their well-being is taken care of.
Felida Villareal
I love that. I definitely agree, you know, when it comes to leadership to, you know, be able to express that compassion and that empathy towards others, especially your team and the members of the community that you’re serving, and it really builds the culture, not only in the workplace, but, you know, in our community and I couldn’t agree more. As we look into the future, obviously, there’s so many emerging trends and priorities and even challenges that will continue to impact our sector. What are some of those emerging trends or challenges that you believe, will be instrumental in impacting nonprofit organizations, specifically working with Latinos?
Frankie Miranda
I think that right now we are in a very, critical moment in which it is important for all of us to reaffirm our potential as community and for the future of this country. As we mentioned before, there is a false narrative whether or not our community is important or contributing or participating, or even if there is a reason why we should be part of the society of the fabric of this country. And what I feel is that, there’s going to be, very soon a recalibration of the environment with regards to everything that is happening really fast, changing, environment since the beginning of the year. Not now. I don’t want to get into politics or anything, but there is a lot of transition that is happening right now.
And what we want to ensure is that we continue to elevate the importance of our community and the contributions of our community. It’s a very well-known fact that if we were just a country and independent country, just a Latino community, we will be the fifth GDP in the world. It’s an economy’s entire contributions. It is the power of our people and how people in this country want to be part of these changing environment and contributing positively to our reality.
So what I feel right now is that we need to reclaim, that. We need to reclaim our own narrative, and making sure that people understand that we are part of the incredible progress that this country is making every single day. Sometimes days seems to be very doom and gloom, but the fact is that people are working every single day, that Latinos are the number one driver of opening new businesses in this country, that we continue to be a force to reckon with, and we need to continue doing that. Diversity is the most important aspect of the work that any company, any government, any nonprofit, any institution can have. It is the way in which we enriched the experiences of many different people and that we learn from each other.
So while right now the trend may be that we’re walking away from diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think that at some point we’re going to realize and autocorrect that and see again the value of it, because the more diverse your team is, the more diverse your workforce is, the more and more effectively you will be able to just move forward towards the future.
Felida Villareal
Absolutely. And definitely, like you mentioned, we’re such an impactful community just within the United States. I feel looking into the future, you know, prioritizing that unity among our Latino communities because like it’s often said, and unity, there’s power. And so by, you know, staying with each other and working together, I think we can definitely amplify that voice. And speaking of elevating our communities, Hispanic Executive just rolled out their Visibility issue at the start of the year. Specifically focusing on LGBTQ+ Latino storytellers in Hollywood who artfully share what it means to be queer and Latino, recognizing their work and the LGBT community is more important than ever, especially during the wake of all that’s going on today.
And I’d love to ask you, how has your leadership shaped your organization’s efforts to amplify these voices and stories? What progress have you seen? But also what challenges do you believe remain in advancing the rights and visibility for this community?
Frankie Miranda
Well, the fact that I am the first openly gay queer leader of the Hispanic Federation has been incredibly important for the organization. Before I was president of the Hispanic Federation, I was working at the Hispanic Federation, and the issue of marriage equality was being debated. I was able to be out in, as part of the, team of the Hispanic Federation. And I was leaving in a situation in which my life partner was leaving in Brazil because he couldn’t come back to the United States because he had he got a ten-year penalty because we when we were together in the early 2000, there was no marriage equality. So we could not adjust his status because we were same-sex.
It was a very important conversation to have because the Federation at the time have always been working with issues around HIV, AIDS, and treatment. But when it comes to policy and advocacy for the LGBTQ community, my story, and my situation with my life partner at the time shaped the idea that with this diverse voice, with Frankie telling his story, the organization better understood and was better equipped to be part of this dialog and be part of the advocacy. In fact, when, marriage equality was going to be heard on the Supreme Court as a case, I was allowed by the Federation to be a spokesperson, especially for Spanish language media, to really understand that marriage equality was not just about marriage, it’s about family reunification, that this was an issue about love, about people that care about each other, that this was about fairness and and equity.
And when we talked about those terms, many people in our community said, I get it. Yes, this is unfair. So going back to this idea of diversity and having environments where many different voices are welcome and that you incorporate, that made us a better organization. With my voice at the time, I was able to just inspire other members of the Hispanic Federation to be part of these incredible, incredible accomplishment in our country moving forward when it comes to civil rights. So when I, as the helm of the Hispanic Federation as president now, I’m always really looking to hear from those voices that are very different than mine, because I will be a better leader and I will be able to understand issues in a very different way than if we were just a homogeneous organizations with people who think the same and look the same, and that speak the same.
So I always value so much the opportunity that the organization created this environment so early on in my career that I could be out, that I could speak about my truth and my reality, that they took care of making sure that I was going to be equipped to be able to make my case about my life story today, my husband and I were married. The Houston American citizens. We have been together for close to twenty-five years, but this was part of shaping an organization, an organization that may have not thought about it if it wasn’t because these voices were allowed to be part of the conversation. And so I am very, very much aware of the privilege that I had in my earlier career to be in an environment like that. And I aspire to make sure that we continue to have that type of environment where everybody can express themselves and that can help us shape what is the next future advocacy agenda for the Hispanic Federation, taking into consideration as many diverse voices as possible?
Felida Villareal
That’s incredible. Well, congratulations on that incredible progress and being that voice for so many of us in our community. I feel like when you stand up for something, it’s truly admiring. But I believe that when you have that personal lived experience, it’s just so much more powerful. So thank you. And with that, I would like to ask you our final question, which is what has been the most rewarding aspect for you as CEO and what advice would you give to aspiring leaders in the nonprofit or philanthropic space?
Frankie Miranda
It is very moving to me when I go to when I am invited to speak at a, forum or space, and I start, by saying, hello, I’m Frankie Miranda, president CEO of the Hispanic Federation. I’m the first openly queer president of the Hispanic Federation. I have been able to share, very important messages, data, sharing knowledge, practices. But when a parent, when somebody comes to me and said, ‘I have a gay son, and seeing you up there, makes me feel that he will have a bright future,’ or young people saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m Latino, I’m queer. And now I feel, I feel seen in an environment like this.’ I was, I was not really ready or aware that that was going to be some of the most moving moments when people come up to me and said, thank you for speaking your truth and not being afraid, because in many different environments, people will be hesitant and just being too open or too human or too raw. So that has been for me, a very humbling experience.
And my advice to nonprofit leaders and any leaders, especially in Hispanic communities that, you know, we sometimes have to fit a certain mold and people sometimes judge us because of our accent or the way that we looked or whether or not we have the right, we went to the right school or whether we went to school. And I think that I have come to learn that being our true self in this environment is what makes us special and what makes us, inspiring to others. If we’re just cookie cutter and we just try to be like others, we will not be able to just inspire people the way that we can do it right now.
And sometimes we’re going to, say may maybe use the wrong verb and maybe your accent comes through, or sometimes you’re not going to be looking in in the way that you probably want everybody else to see you. But at the end of the day, it is what’s going to make you it’s going to make you the best leader that you can be.
Felida Villareal
Absolutely. And I think at the end of the day, it’s what makes us authentic and, really valuable and not only for our organizations, but for the community as well. Frankie, thank you again so much for sharing all your wonderful insights and your experiences with us today. I just want to say I personally admire your leadership at Hispanic Federation tremendously. I think you have an incredible vision and, you know, your resilience and authentic leadership has just transformed so many of our communities, beyond New York, especially for us here in South Texas. And so just wanted to, let you know, we are extremely grateful for everything that you’re doing at the organization. And is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience about the future of Latino-led organizations and their role in advancing equity and opportunity?
Frankie Miranda
Well, first of all, thank you so much. And for, sharing the way that we have worked together as well with our audience. But at the end of the day, we just need to, stay strong. We are going through challenging times as community, but we are going to get through this. And as a other very wise leader said to me recently, we have been through this before. So while there’s going to be peaks and valleys, while we need to continue to do is to stay strong and to stay united.
Felida Villareal
Absolutely. Thank you.
Frankie Miranda
Thank you.
