‘Only the boy can go.’
Those are five words former AT&T T, +1.21% Vice Chairman Ralph de la Vega says changed his life forever. They’re also the words he used to introduce one of the most poignant tales — and there were many — told during the l’Attitude conference in San Diego this week.
As his remarkable story goes, he was just 10 years old when his family attempted to flee communist Cuba. At the airport, lacking all the necessary paperwork, they were told “only the boy can go.”
So he got on that plane, and the family stayed. His father told him it would be just a couple days. Consider it a sleepover, he assured the youngster.
Four years would pass before de la Vega saw his family again.
Ralphdelavega.com Ralph de la Vega shortly after arriving in America.
Fresh off the plane in Florida, he found himself living with people he’d never met, in a country he’d never visited, walking dozens of blocks to school through a hard neighborhood and getting bullied by kids in a language he couldn’t understand.
It was all too much to comprehend. “Did I do something wrong? Why am I getting punished? Am I in trouble?” he’d ask himself. “It was really rough and confusing going from a well-to-do family to this was so hard.”
De la Vega told MarketWatch in an interview that his fighting spirit was born in those dark days, paving the way for his immigrant success story — he worked his way up the ladder to become the president of BellSouth Latin America in 2002, was named president and CEO of AT&T Mobile & Business Solutions in 2014, and ultimately retired as vice chairman from the telecom giant.
“It’s been an unbelievable ride,” he said. “Whatever our faults are, to give a kid like me that kind of opportunity, America’s the greatest country in the world, bar none.”
De la Vega told his story against the backdrop of a conference focused on the Latino community’s robust impact — past, present and, most importantly, future — on the U.S. economy.
Read: U.S. risks ‘economic suicide’ if it doesn’t embrace this shift
He acknowledges the negativity that has swelled under the Trump administration, but, like many of the Latino executives taking the stage in recent days, de la Vega maintains an optimistic outlook.
“People have those different views, and I respect that. I don’t align with them, but we’ll keep telling our story and take the high road,” he said. “The facts are on our side. We’ll work through this. I am very confident about that.”
