Jimmy Medina Is Rooted in Resilience

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Growing up in a town of four thousand people in Gridley, California, Jimmy Medina’s Mexican immigrant parents told him a certain story over and over again. The family spent summers working on Medina’s grandfather’s plum orchard—plums that would ultimately become prunes.

The difference between a vital plum and a wrinkled prune can be so stark that it’s hard to believe they come from the same place. Medina’s parents didn’t want to see their son turn into a prune.

“Every kid in our extended family had a row we were picking,” remembers Medina, senior director of IT at Ross Stores. “It’s how we’d learn the value of money for back-to-school clothes. But my parents would always remind me that if I didn’t go to college, I was going to spend the rest of my life in that orchard. They would tell me that so many Mexicans spend their whole lives doing this hard labor, and I had a chance to be different.”

Medina’s motivation to get out of his four-stoplight town crystallized when he was in a car accident in high school—an accident that took the life of a good friend. After Medina worked through the grief, he realized that he wanted a broader experience and something different than what he had known all his life.

The senior director’s first gig out of college was at Deloitte, where he worked with major brands like Gap, Visa, and Waldo’s Dólar Mart de México, and learned how these companies functioned. Though he initially joined Deloitte in the strategy and operations consulting practice, he transitioned into an IT retail consulting job at Accenture. His first assignment was in Maui.

Medina has spent the last nineteen years in-house at Ross Stores. He started as an IT manager and was promoted through the years to an IT senior director role, where he’s helped roll out large-scale projects for Ross. Ross has been Medina’s home for nearly two decades because of its culture.

“The people here are amazing. They’re driven. They’re so smart. And you feel like leadership here cares about its people,” Medina explains. “You never feel like you’re holed up in your desk.”

Add to that Medina’s belief that Ross strategy is always on point. The senior director says the company is very strategic in its roadmaps and delivery plans. Medina has helped to roll out transformational programs on a national level, including new time and attendance systems, labor management solutions, point-of-sale systems, and more recently, a new associate-facing solution to support the store’s team of more than 100,000 frontline operations workers. Medina says the best part of his job is that there are always new projects on the horizon. There’s just no way to get bored.

Outside his tech focus, Medina has taken on leadership opportunities. He helped launch the LatinX Community Network at Ross in 2021 and has since served as a leader in the employee resource group, actively supporting Ross’s efforts to build an inclusive environment for all associates.

Medina’s personal life has also taken a meaningful turn since the COVID-19 pandemic, when he decided to prioritize his faith. He started attending church online and now serves at Eastown Church, helping with its Alpha course just blocks away from his home. At the time of speaking, Medina was planning to attend the 2024 Love Never Fails Freedom Walk in Oakland, California, which aims to bring attention to human trafficking and underserved communities.

“I have always loved serving Latinos and being a mentor to people in need, but this new chapter has given me such a new perspective to see the world,” Medina says. “This isn’t just a church. It’s about the community and making our world a better place.”

Medina keeps finding new ways to grow—and to grow others. He’s out of the orchard, but his connection to his roots remains.

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