A First-Generation Professional Profile: Rafael Flores

Michelle Hoover: Can you start us off by taking us through your career?

Rafael Flores: I graduated from Vassar 1984, came down to DC in the ’86-’87 time frame, and started graduate school at American University, in international relations. I was fortunate enough to get a fellowship there, which helped me enormously since I was paying for it myself. 

A friend turned me onto the presidential management intern program, then, now the Presidential Management Fellows Program, and I was very fortunate to have been selected out of grad school. And so I finished school and worked for the US Army Security Systems Command, which was the Army component responsible for foreign military sales—what I've been involved in for the last thirty-three years.

Hoover: Would you share more about your background and where you came from?

Flores: My mom was much more educated than my father; she went to nursing school. And my father was much more of a very blue collar, you know, like, job to job. My sister went to nursing school, a little college, but really more nursing school. My brother got his GED, and he became a New York City police officer and retired as a detective in New York. And so, yeah, growing up, kind of starting out in the South Bronx. I was born in 1961. It was a little bit of a different environment. I mean, there wasn’t that professional class, was really more in terms of nurses. There was nobody in my immediate family who went to college. … My parents were working class, I mean, very working class, but education was important, and it was encouraged. 

Hoover: Do you remember the first time you heard the term First-Generation Professional? How did you react?

Flores: It's interesting. You know, to be honest with you, it's not something I've ever really thought about. I mean, until you mentioned it, I can be honest and say, you know, I never really thought of myself that way. I actually had to look it up a little bit and figure out well, maybe it is part of me, maybe I do fit that.

Even when I graduated from Vassar and I was kind of trying to find my way in New York City, friends were saying, “Well, why don't you just join the cops?” It wasn't until I left New York that I realized I was one of the first people to leave New York—back then, you stayed in New York or you moved to Puerto Rico—so leaving the city was kind of different. It was a little bit daunting, to be honest with you. I was fortunate that the opportunities presented themselves, and I had enough courage to actually pursue them. But I don't think I was endowed with anything special. I think I was just fortunate that I was able to take advantage of these things and not be afraid to try something different. Across the board, irrespective of race, religion, or anything else, I think they're just afraid to try something different. And I think, part of this, if I were to describe what a First-Generation Professional is, is a real desire to be better. And really just kind of break with norms. Not because you're looking down but just simply living up to your potential.

Hoover: How do you think being an FGP has helped or hindered your professional progress and why?

Flores: Being a first generation, being any professional, frankly, at a young age, you're a blank slate. I was very fortunate in that I had people who saw potential in me and were encouraging. I had folks whom I befriended who were more than willing to help me navigate some tricky situations, sometimes in terms of office politics, and to steer me in making career choices.

I can look back on that now and look at people who are significantly younger than me and say, “Okay, sit down for a minute. Let me talk to you about this.” It's the things you don't know, navigating and strategizing how to attack a problem or an issue. Coming at it with a completely blank slate and having to learn the hard way has been both a curse and a benefit.

Hoover: How do you think being first gen impacted you and your career journey?

Flores: You have to learn what you don't want to do. Before I went to grad school, I was a paralegal in New York. I also worked in a restaurant. It was all a process of learning what I really didn't want to be. The first part of your career is drilling down a bit to figure out, based on the experiences that you're having, what you absolutely do not want. 

When I started working for the government, at one point, I can honestly tell you, I was thirty-one, thirty-two years old, and I was looking around and saying, “Oh, dear God, I like these people.” But I didn't want to be them in twenty-five years, because they could stay in their nice private little Idaho and keep doing the same thing every day and keep drawing a paycheck and stay fairly secure within that little space and never move on. And they were perfectly content to do that. These people were completely content, and contentment is not a luxury you can afford. If I'm going to say anything about First-Generation Professionals, it’s that contentment is your enemy. Once you start getting a little too comfortable, you need to be stimulated; there needs to be something that drives you.

Hoover: That really strikes a chord with me. We are constitutionally unable to be content.

Flores: I think that part of it is fear? And I think, honestly, it's the fear of failure. And that insecurity is what makes you work long hours; sometimes it's why we’re working weekends. I think that has always driven me, that fear of failure. When I took a promotion, I was terrified of what if they figure out I'm not as smart as they think I am. That's what drives you.

Founder’s Note: Our conversation with Rafael Flores ends with a concept that comes up regularly in our interviews with FGPs: imposter syndrome. FGPs, who are among the first in their families to graduate from college and enter the white-collar world, can feel out of place in these foreign settings. This is totally understandable.

FGPs, how have you battled imposter syndrome? What has worked well for you?