Ep. 190 - Maria Jose Cook

Hi, this is Dr. Ossos. I'll leave it with another episode, The Weight of College podcast. And one thing that I wanted to clarify for everybody, for our listeners, for our guests, while the show is entitled The Weight of College podcast, really, I came up with the title, I think, as a play on words and the way to sort of the how to of. And so some of us get it right. Some of us get it right in the sense that we're successful navigating that pathway and their expectations set up for us and we go to college and and, you know, are able to navigate that path. And for some of us, we choose other paths for some of us that pathway is is a little more difficult, but we continue or we pursue a different path. And so really, the show is about embracing all of our all of our paths. I've had a number of guests who didn't go to college, some that didn't finish. And so I really wanted to to reinforce that the show is all about embracing our paths and, you know, for some people who find themselves in the midst of that educational journey, the formal educational journey of being in college. They might find they maybe didn't have a successful semester. Now that's not to say that colleges and for them, but perhaps situations happen and they might have to take a step back or or take another route. And so I really want, you know, to reinforce that this is about embracing all of our pathways, all of our journeys. And inside, I just, you know, we are, I think this is probably episode 190 something. So, you know, it's a reminder about, you know, the show and the stories and again celebrating everybody's journey. My guest today. We had we first met actually 24 hours prior to this recording. And we had a great conversation and I learned a little bit about her journey, but, you know, just trying to get to know each other a little more before having her on the podcast and really her story is an amazing story. I'm not even going to try to do an introduction for her. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask her to introduce herself. So, Maria, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners out there. Well, thank you very much for having me. Dr. Sandy Bad and it has been a pleasure to meet you for the last 24 hours. I appreciate that. My name is Maria Jose Cook. I am originally from Costa Rica, came to the United States when I was 14. Professionally, I am Associate Director of Executive Affairs for ISPO, which is the professional society for health economics and outcomes research. And I have been in this position for about two and a half years with ISPO as a whole for 13. Wow. Well, yeah, Maria, I am. You're not the first, my first guest to come to us from the sort of the association realm. And so I'm eager to get into that. But as with all of my guests, I always start with, if you had to identify a starting point for educational journey, or that starting point B. I thought about this and I appreciate that you gave me the question prior to us having this podcast. I thought about this a lot yesterday and even this morning when I was driving to work. The path is that as you grow older, I guess there are certain times that you, you, you can answer that question. And we, I guess we'll get into it. But for me, the first time that I really understood how important it was and how important it was for me to educate and advocate for myself and my education journey was when I came to United States. I was undocumented for 11 years. We came to the United States when I was 14 years old. And we came to Ohio. At all places in the world, we came to Ohio. After I was in Ohio for about six months, I went to high school there and it was like your typical, like the kind of high school you see in the movies where the jocks sit at a table and cheerleaders at another table. It was quite a culture shock for me. They had an ESL class, so I didn't know any English. I didn't speak any English whatsoever. I understood a couple of times because of friends. I used to watch at that time the Sony channel that used to have friends and Will and Grace. I used to watch those. And so they only had an ESL class. It was still in English, just teaching you how to read and how to write in English. And then my family decided to move to New Jersey. Here is where this part, this is like my first introduction to that advocacy for myself. I got to the high school where I was going to go to and they, the person that was helping me sign up, my parents were there with me, but they just speak much English. So I was pretty much translating and speaking on my behalf at 15 years old. And one of the questions that she's asked me was, you know, do you want to go to the bilingual program? We have a bilingual program that teaches you in Spanish, science and math. And then there is the full English program and I said, I want to go to the full English program because I want to learn English faster. I just felt that if I was taking classes in Spanish, I might not be able to learn as fast. And I'm moving over to Achiever. You know about that. I am. And so the person asked me, okay, what are your electives? And I said, I don't understand what's an elective. And she went off and said, you don't know English. And says, you can't speak English and you don't know what an elective is. Then I'm going to have you go to the bilingual program because you're not, you don't know English and you're not going to be able to succeed. Even though I was coming with six months of straight A's as I just landed in Ohio. And I said, I don't, I just don't know what electives are. If you can explain to me what an elective is, then I can tell you. She's like, well, like your French or your, you know, Spanish, all extracurricular activities, which is what they call them in Ohio. I had no idea that, you know, you could call them two different things. And she was still adamant for me to take to go to the bilingual program. I told her, no, my parents were there. They didn't say anything because they knew, like they knew that I was defending myself. And begrudgingly she put me in the English program and I graduated number two in my class. So I showed her and I said bet, which is I think another theme that you're going to see a lot with me through this podcast. It's the okay bet. I'll take it on and I'll do it. So that was a very big moment for me of understanding that people, you know, I'm going to have to advocate for myself in this journey. And what I want is as important as what people are telling me that I should do education wise. So that was the first time. Maria, that's a, that's a powerful story and, and, you know, I've had a couple of guests talk about either immigrating to the United States, but certainly advocating for themselves. Even when with mom and dad sort of in tow in a meeting with a counselor and mom and dad not being familiar with sort of the American school system. And so they become advocates for themselves. And at like with all of them, I always ask, well, where did that advocacy come from? Where did it? Where did that realization that, okay, I need to speak up for myself come from because I mean, as a native English speaker and, and, you know, very familiar with with schools in America. You know, I think about there were opportunities and, and, and of course I was one of the students that had opportunities available to them. But even, even moments where it was probably best that I advocate for myself. I wasn't advocating for myself. Where did that come from? My parents. My immigration story is not a usual one and I, I, we came for vacation. And I do have to say I, I think my older brother, I have my medium is a four. And the brother before me, he was the one to pay for my ticket to come to the United States. So I'll forever and when I make my first billion dollars, I he'll get some of that cash. But, you know, I have a lot to thank him because he buying that ticket literally changed my life. But I do have to say my parents, my mom is a firecracker. She is just like me. She comes in and she's very tough and she knows what she wants and she's not afraid of speaking her mind. Sometimes she gets in trouble and then I have to get her out of it. But for the most part, you know, she's just the person that I have looked up to since I was younger because she's just somebody that has been become instrumental in a lot of the places that she has worked for. And being, and my dad is the opposite. He was a very so spoken man with a really good heart. But he would take the shirt off his back for, for anybody. So I think between the both of them, I just kind of have this really good formative years that taught me that working hard was, was important and speaking up to for yourself is important. And I have a little bit of both. So with the feistyness of my mom and my dad's sort of empathetic heart. And I think I saw that as a way to being in that sort of where I also want my children to get from me. So it was them that taught me that if nobody's going to speak for you, you're going to have to do it yourself. Oh, well. So here you are, you're you arrive in Ohio, you do well, you move to New Jersey, you advocate for yourself, and then you graduate from between your class, right? Now, excuse me, along the way, in New Jersey, for example, my guests have always talked about a teacher or two that that see potential in them. And or teachers that are sort of giving them the messages that you know reinforcement positive messages that they can do well and and they can dream big. What kinds of messages were you getting from your teachers from the school? This is an interesting question because my high school was pretty rough. It was a rough high school where you had fights every day and they would throw food at you when you go by hallway. Not to me, though, because I made friends with people that did that. So they were throwing food at me. But it was it was a rough high school with metal detectors and the doors. And so the teachers had a lot going on. They had a lot of things to worry about than some Costa Rican girl, you know, kind of there. However, that's not without saying that I had really good teachers and there's a couple that come to mind when I was in 10th grade, I was taking 11 great classes and one of them was British English. Why I don't know, but one of them helped me. We have to read Belle Wolf and we read it in old English. So I mean, so I think all of that helped with, you know, kind of formatting your character and making sure that you stick with it. The messages that were giving me, I think they knew that I had potential because I was undocumented in my senior year. I wasn't able to get any type of scholarship, but I do recall my counselor putting me up for a scholarship that it was just a check. It was $250 check from our local bodega. And I felt that that's all he could do for me. And it was quite impactful, even though it was nothing that I could use for, you know, going to a four year school. And then I also had, you know, conversations with my social studies teacher and my art teacher where I kind of let them know, you know, if there's people that don't want to take opportunities that I'm going to take them for them because they don't know what they're, they don't know what they have. One of my sort of regrets in a way is the fact that yeah, because I wasn't undocumented, I wasn't able to go to Columbia University, which I wanted to study journalism or go to Harvard or Yale, which I had the pleasure to have meetings with when they came to my school. But the messages was always clear and they kind of knew that I could do better. I think I told you yesterday my story about Driver's Ed and how I knew I wasn't going to be able to get a license. So I didn't try hard to pass the test. And my teacher came and said to me, I expected better from you. I don't know if he knew my situation. I don't think he did. But that stuck with me because it taught me that even though I might not be able to get something right away, I still need to prove to people that I'm capable of doing what I need to do. And that stuck with me. Even though it was just a little driving test, it was a paper test and I remember very vividly the questions and I was like, yeah, whatever. And he told me, I expected better from you. And that hit me hard because it's like, okay, it's not just people are looking at me besides myself and I'm making an impact around my school and not just for me and they noticing. So I should probably try a little harder even though I can't drive until I get my green card. Yeah, it was, there were very good teachers there, even though they had their hands full with quite a few students. But it was, I don't, I think I am who I am because of that school as well. Yeah, it certainly sounds like it. It sounds like the messaging and lessons that they imparted on you have certainly stuck and have influenced you. So, if because of your status at the time, what did you decide to do after high school? So I was able to go to college. Well, it was a community college. I was able to go because I still lived in New Jersey. So I was able to still go to school. And I was able to go study there and I had a counselor that helped me kind of navigate the situation. I couldn't apply for financial aid, of course, because I had also security number. So what a two year school, you know, anybody else take it two years took me for because I had to work under the table and have to pay for school at the same time. So maybe one or two classes a semester and then take a class in the summer and then another one or two classes in the fall until I was able to graduate four years later. So I cannot technically went to a four year school. But yeah, I came out with an associate's degree in television production communications. I made Dean's list every, every semester, only one class. So I had to drop out of the math class because I'm just like really bad at math. But yeah, I mean, that's what I did. I kind of I started to meet people on the way and this counselor, she took me in and kind of helped me navigate all of this. Because I was scared, right? I'm not that I'm scared. Like I don't, I'm like, I don't want to give anybody my address. I don't want to give people a reason to come and find me or my family or anything like that. But no, she reassured me that everything would be fine and it was and I was able to do what I had to do four years. And but no, I was able to make it through. And you so you majored in television production. What is it that you wanted to do? I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be in front of the camera and like, and here now we have this. I wanted to be. I wanted to be a journalist or maybe move into movies and do some cinematography. Now I realized that the cinematography thing is a dream because yeah, I can take a photo but not that type of photo. But maybe a location scout or production, something like that. I did want it to do it. I did intern for more. I was a student at the University of Fort Povic on my one of my last semesters in college. By then I had met my now husband and I married around 23. He was a US citizen. So then I started to be able to do the process. But I was also pregnant with our first child. And then I did it for three years and then I dedicated to make sure I get my green card and my work permit and all that stuff. And then to raise my my now 16 year old but he was you know, he was a baby at the time. Wow. You say you earn your associates television production, getting ready to start a family and professionally what comes next for you? I didn't know because I didn't at that moment mean I graduated. I was five months pregnant when I graduated with with my little one and I was taking the train to intern for more public pregnant. And when you're pregnant and you're having morning sickness, it was not the best thing to do. So it was four months of that. And then I graduated when I was five months pregnant and then I had him and I knew I had to go to work. I just didn't know of course like I'm not going to move to LA or try to make it in New York. It's just that that was not the party. The party was was the baby and the party was was me. I always wanted to work. I didn't want it to be a stay at home mom because as you can tell I speak with my hands, which means I just I want to go all the time. So I just wanted to find something to do and I moved on to work for a lawyer first as an admin for his office. And then I moved to a call center, which was not you know, it was not something that I wanted to do. But in six months at that call center, then I moved on to the same job. I moved on to being an outreach coordinator. And that was something as well that people are like, how did you move so quickly? I met the person that the supervisor met them in the bathroom and I was like, hi, my name is Maria. And if you have an opening, please give it to me. And I think you stuck with her and she true story true story. I found out she was because I wanted to do that. They were traveling all over New Jersey to talk about Medicaid. And I was like, I rather be doing that than be answering calls. It's just not my thing. And I met her in the bathroom and I introduced myself after wash her hands and I just shook her hand and said, hey, we have an opening. Let me know. And I got the call about a week and a half later. And I went to work there for a while until I I found is poor and I have been here's ever since. It's it's it's amazing how right you I think when that first get that first experience advocating for yourself. Then it just becomes easier to speak up for yourself right if you're looking out for yourself and looking for like you said fun is in charge of responsible for hiring and right. I'm going to go talk to this person because I'm this that's the work that I want to be doing if I'm going to be here. It's amazing how that how that works out. Yeah, incredible. It's really cool though. It's fair. It makes you feel really proud. I told you this yesterday. I'm consider myself the Kool-Aid man. I come here and you know I'm here and something I have to work on because they don't need the Kool-Aid man to come in. It is a little bit quiet. But I'm proud of my personality that my personality has gotten me me far and then once you get to know me then my work speaks for itself, which I'm very proud of. I and I like that. You know, and I'll get to that that messaging right because I think that's important that we advocate for ourselves but then that our work also speaks for ourselves. Before we go, we we talk about that one question that I have for you is throughout my interviews, I'll always ask yes for pieces of advice. And so what advice would you give a young person? Maybe they're a recent immigrant, but certainly they are struggling with advocating for themselves. What advice would you give somebody who would it would be to their benefit to advocate for themselves, but for some reason or other? They aren't willing to take that step. It comes with time. And I know it's scary, but you have to do it. Nobody else is going to do it for you. I say this to my my oldest, especially that he's a now a sophomore in high school. Nobody's going to create that path for you. You cannot wait for people to create the path for you. You're going to have to create it yourself. And then if people want to help you along that path you're building, then awesome. If not, don't wait for anybody. It's especially if you're an immigrant here and if let's say your parents don't speak English or you live in a rough neighborhood or you have friends and they're not in the best position or they're not doing it. They're not doing the best themselves. If you because this is pretty much what happened to me. I always felt and I don't mean this in any type of way that I'm full of myself or anything like that. I just always felt that I was destined for something bigger and I was destined for not. I don't need to be J. J. Lo or anything like that. I just felt that there was something in me that always knew that whatever situation I was in, I was just destined to for bigger and for happiness and for better. So if you if that's what you feel and or even if it's not at the moment, but you want to get out of your situation, if you're going to have to speak up, even if it's a little scary, just do it respectfully and do it with. Talking points or with proof of that you deserve certain things. You can write things down before you go and then you show the pain this and this and this is exactly why I need to be where I think I need to be. And people respect that because you not only showing receipts as we like to say it a lot of days, but they respect the fact that you're advocating for yourself. And even if you don't get it now, you get it in the future because at least you did it. And it's also a lot of patience that you need to to add, you know, you need to have a lot of patience, but it will happen. I mean, I can say with with all certainty that if you say to yourself and you continue to to advocate for yourself as uncomfortable as it might be, it'll happen. It really will. Thank you. Thank you for that advice. The next thing that I wanted to ask was, because I think you said something that's really important, you talked about advocating for yourself, but then about how your work speaks for itself because I think I think advocating for yourself absolutely as critical is important. But then when you show up. And when you get that opportunity, making the most of that opportunity and really proving yourself. Why is that important? Maria. My mom always said something to me. And I'll say it in Spanish and I try to translate it to to English. We've not very religious people, but my mom always used to say, honor your father and your mother, which means, you know, honor your mom and your dad. And that has always stayed true with me. And she said, if you honor them, then everything will work out. And it has for me. I mean, don't get me wrong. My life is not perfect and I could use a couple of million dollars and that's perfectly fine. We all could. But it's, you know, it's just something that is important to me that I always say true to myself. And honestly, I, to me, when you work at a place, any place where the good Mrs. you know, a fast food place to a sky rise in Manhattan, anywhere you are. If you have a good heart and you stay authentic to your values and your beliefs. And you work really hard and you don't walk over people, you don't humiliate people that you remember where you come from, whether it's Costa Rica or down the street. People will take notice of that and your work would speak for itself in a way and I mean by that that if you are authentic, then people will start helping you and people will start lifting you up and showing you different things and then you start working harder because you know that there are people that you're making proud of. You're making yourself proud and at the end of the day what matters is that you can sleep at night. Right. So for me, if you come in to a job, don't get me wrong, you poor people and you're going to have conflict. That's just something that you cannot avoid. You're going to have conflict and you're going to be there days that you're going to be like, I cannot work with this person. I just can't. It's a lot. I can't do much and I can't deal with it. And I'm sure they said same thing about me because I can't be too much again. I am the Kool-Aid man. But if you do your job and you do it with a good heart and not do it for to put anybody down or mess with anybody's advancement or so you can get all the glory and they don't. Things like that are important. And people start noticing in your reputation will speak for itself and they'll know that at least for my end, I know that people, if they people ask me to do something for them, they know to get done and it'll get down well because I mean well. Yeah. That's important. That's very important. Thank you. Thank you for talking about that. Maria, how is it that you learned about the work that you're doing now and the association that you're involved with now? I fell into it. So what happened is that after I did my outreach work and again, I was just just just awesome and I get to travel and you know kind of travel or any journey, but I need some different. And I wanted to travel more than just New Jersey. And before in my time, I'm not that old, but in my time when I had to apply for jobs, you used to be able to just click on different jobs at the same time and then just send your resume. Right. One of the jobs was for a coordinator for a sport for the Latin America department and I applied for that because I speak Spanish and they needed somebody that was bilingual. And I went on an interview and I got the job and I just kind of fell into the association world. It was not something that I thought I was going to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I really didn't because again, I didn't go to for your school. So I didn't have like a specialty and then yeah, TV production school and all, but like again, not moving to Hollywood. So I was sort of all over the place and I had a baby and it was a lot. And I fell into this, this company. I fell into a sport in a way and they show me a lot of what I can do and every day I'm learning and now I get to travel all over the world, which is something that I really wanted to do. And it's something that I'm very proud of and the association world. Once you get in it, there are so many possibilities. There's so many places you can work. There's so much different activities that you can do. And the good thing about the association world is that there's an association for everything. There's also association for podcasters. There's association for executive assistance. There's an association for people that work at supermarkets. There's an association for everything. So if something speaks to you in particular, you might be able to not only be part of the association, but maybe work for that association depending on your expertise. So it's a great sort of little niche, but global, which is very interesting. But there is a lot to do here. And I appreciate you talking about that because I don't know that we got to speak to this yesterday, but another reason why I started the podcast was because I feel like, and I think we're all sort of fall into this trap where when we're young, highly impressionistic, right, whether we're in high school or college, but we see our opportunities. Because I think, again, this is just my perspective is, I think we see a lot of times our opportunities kind of very narrowly. So like we have tunnel vision and I can do like maybe these things. And maybe, and I don't know if this was the case for you, but maybe, you know, 20 year old Maria was thinking, okay, television production, I can do these things, right. But, you know, what I enjoy highlighting with the podcast is that there are so many different jobs out there. Many that we've never heard of. But, you know, when we're teenagers and in college and high school, we've never heard about these jobs. I didn't know about the associations until I think after I graduated college, and I think being involved in nonprofits and seeing some of these associations and seeing, you know, in at least in the nonprofit side, right. And so for me, it was always like eye opening just that, oh, wow, I could do this or you know what I could find myself doing this. Now, in the, in with the association, tell us about your current role. What is it that you do? Sure. So, as I mentioned, I'm associate director of executive affairs. So I work directly with the CEO of our organization is for is an organization global that speaks about health economics and outcomes research. And my role in particular is take care of the CEO office, make sure that everything that comes through any requests and calls, etc. come to me. And I also work with our board of directors do board of directors meetings and anything that has to do with a president or president elect. That's me. Besides that, I'm also taking on other responsibilities like working on the helping with the strategic plan, helping with budgeting, kind of little, little things here and there. I call it very supply and demand, because it's really a supply and demand organization. Well, at least my role in particular is a very supply and demand role. But it is my organization has a really good idea on how to really bring together a lot of stakeholders to talk about health care. And I'm very proud of working for them because it's a really good organization. And for me in particular, I have done since I started as a coordinator, I've done every job that you could possibly imagine here. I really have done membership and I've done help with meetings and publications. So it has given me a really good rounded sort of knowledge of of a sport. And I also always say, you know, I might not have a PhD, but I do have a PhD in this sport because I haven't quite I've been here a minute. So it's great. It's a great organization to work for. What do you like best about your job? Well, I mean, honestly, for me, I think I get to live off my dream of traveling the world, which has been I have been to places that never in a million years I would think about going. I really haven't. And even if I did, it was just in my dreams. I also like my colleagues. They're really amazing people that really love what they do. And they care. They care a lot about putting a good event together and and bringing good content for our members and making sure conversations happen and making sure publications are relevant to what patients are doing. And health care, it's going through at the moment. And I also love the fact that I am on first name basis with people that have their own Wikipedia pages and are, you know, deans of universities and ministers of health and people that you walk with them and there's people that stop them for autographs and pictures. And these are the who's who of the health economics world. And for somebody that has an associates in television production, that is not something that you think it will happen. So I am very privileged on what I do. And I also am privileged because I do love what I do. I love my job and I love this organization. So it's a really great feeling. Even the days I'm tired and even, you know, my coworkers, if they ever see this, they're going to be like, okay, like sometimes you are tired and sometimes you do complain. But that's just the nature of being a human being. At the end of the day, Espor has been just a catalyst in my life and something that I'm always going to be grateful that I kind of press that little button to apply and that I got in. Maria, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your journey. You know, as we transition out. And I always ask my guests to leave us with a piece of advice and it's graduation season. And so LinkedIn asked me to give advice to the class of 2025. And so now I'm eager to hear from your people. What advice would you give to the graduating class of 2025 as they're starting out in the professional world? To me, it's okay if you have to pivot. And it's okay if you have to change. And it's okay what you thought it was going to be for you. It's not. It is perfectly okay. It's perfectly okay. What you do with the opportunities that are given to you is what's important. So if you have to move careers, if you have to move places, if you break up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your significant other and they go somewhere else and you find yourself not knowing what to do, it's okay. What you have to do and what you have to take on is what are you going to do with the opportunities that were given to you? And that's going to make you or break you. So my advice is to take every opportunity that you're given, whether it's good, whether it's bad, and take it and say, okay, I'm going to run with this. I'm going to see where I can build upon this, whether it's grief or whether it's happiness. Just take it and embrace it and go with it. Just go with it. I love that. I love that. I appreciate that. Thank you, Maria. My pleasure. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Thank you. Thank you for your story and for opening up and sharing that with us. I know it's going to resonate with a lot of folks. And I think I shared that with you yesterday. I think just what I heard yesterday, I think it'll resonate with others. And I'm absolutely having heard the rest of it today or a little more today. I know it'll resonate with a lot of folks out there. So I appreciate everything that you've left us with today. Of course, my pleasure. This concludes another episode of the Way to College podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners out there, viewers, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and all of that good stuff. Make sure you share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. See you again soon. Bye bye.