| Father's death fuels son's Harvard drive
By Emily Anthes, Globe Correspondent, 6/11/2004 Just the sight of peach trees is still enough to make Martin Curiel itch. As a boy, he spent hours with 50-pound bags of the fruit slung around his neck as he plucked peaches off the trees in California. Curiel and his family of migrant workers followed the harvests of cherries, olives, and other crops. But peaches were particularly difficult. In the heat, peach fuzz would stick to the sweat on Curiel's neck and cause days of infuriating itching. But it wasn't the scratching, the heat, or even the exhaustion that got to Curiel. It was the boredom. So Curiel learned to keep his mind engaged by calculating as he picked. "I'd project out 'this is how many buckets I'll pick this year, how many articles of clothing I'd buy with that money.' It's what kept me from going crazy." Yesterday, Curiel graduated from Harvard Business School, walking off the stage not only with a master's degree and a California consulting job, but with plans to found the Migrant MBA Project, a nonprofit that will put his degree to use back in the fields where he worked as a child. "This has been a lifetime goal of mine," Curiel said. "I believe that I have an incredible power base to make a really, really positive influence on my community, and I have a sense of duty to make my family happy." The graduation, held in overcast weather, was muted, but the emotion was not. Just before the ceremony began, Curiel found his mother, who has been staying with him in his dorm room for the past week while attending graduation events. Maria Curiel, 57, wiped tears away as she adjusted the tassel on her son's cap. "Soy la mujer mas feliz en la tierra," she said in Spanish after the graduation. "I am the happiest woman on earth." His mother, Curiel said, is the source of his passion for learning. But his drive came from a tragedy that killed his father. Months after becoming the first in his family to graduate from high school, Curiel was riding in a truck of farm workers when it collided with a trailer truck that ran a stop sign. Five of the eight passengers in the truck died, including Curiel's father. They had been heading home so Curiel could get ready to leave for his freshman year in college. "My father essentially died for my education; that's what still motivates me," he said. "Nothing can be as difficult as seeing my father die in front of me. Calculus, differential equations, that was nothing." Curiel plans to return to California to be close to his family, work full time for a management consulting firm in San Francisco, and try to get the Migrant MBA Project off the ground. In 2002, Hispanics made up just 4.5 percent of students in MBA programs, according to the National Society of Hispanic MBAs. With the help of the College Assistance Migrant Program, an educational advocacy group for migrants, Curiel was able to find only seven former migrant workers nationwide who had earned an MBA degree. He hopes the Migrant MBA Project, which began as an independent study project on migrant workers, will bridge the worlds of business and migrant farming. Among other things, the program will provide mentors for migrant students who enroll at the nation's top business schools and offer training in financial planning and entrepreneurship to help migrants become more independent. Curiel believes those with MBAs can not only bring capital to migrant communities, but they also can use a business approach to solve some of the problems migrant workers face. "Most of my family members have been doing farm work for 40 years," he said. "There's something wrong with that. There are solutions that can ultimately propel migrants to a more stable lifestyle." His first client: his mother. This summer he hopes to help Maria Curiel, whose education ended in third grade, but who loves computers, start an online consignment business. If it succeeds, he said, his mom will be able to quit her job canning peaches. As a child, Curiel spent six months every year moving around the West Coast as his family followed the crops. The family spent the other six months in Mexico, living off the money they made in the United States. During these years, Curiel was in school sporadically and mostly ignored the worksheets and packets teachers sent home. But in high school, Curiel began attending classes full time and graduated second in his class. He landed a scholarship to California Polytechnic State University and earned a degree in civil engineering. A chance encounter with a Harvard MBA while working on a California political campaign in 2000 propelled Curiel to business school. Curiel already had founded a successful nonprofit that paired professionals with low-income students, He applied only to Harvard and cried for an hour when he got in. "To this day I get chills when I look at the brick Harvard buildings," Curiel said. "I still can't believe I'm here." As he prepared to collect his diploma, he acknowledged that adjusting to Harvard was tough. Nearly every day, in every class, Curiel felt as if the admissions office had made a mistake. But being around self-assured classmates, many of them Ivy League graduates, taught Curiel the importance of speaking up for himself. "In my culture, you're taught to be modest," he said. Harvard Business School "has taken a little of that out of me," he said. Curiel said Harvard gave him the tools to make a difference in the migrant community. He said he hopes to help other migrant students succeed. "I remember my dad saying, 'My son wants to go to college,"' Curiel said. "And everyone else said, 'In five years he's going to be out here working the fields."' Commencements Harvard University, Cambridge GRADUATES: 6,156. DEGREES: Bachelor's, master's, doctorates. SPEAKER: Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations. HONORARY DEGREES: Annan; Margaret Atwood, novelist; J. Michael Bishop, cancer researcher; Robert L. Carter, civil rights lawyer and judge; Suzanne Farrell, ballet dancer; Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist; Frank Kermode, literary critic; Shirley M. Tilghman, president, Princeton University; Edward O. Wilson, biologist. This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 6/11/2004.
|