A MIGHTY RIDE NOV/DEC 2021 | 54 | FRONTDOORS MEDIA Y ou can tell she’s well-traveled, smart and serious. You will learn that she likes to cook and loves her Boston Terrier puppy, Ellie. And yet, if you found yourself in conversation with Carla Vargas Jasa, you’d still be taken aback by her openness. Her candor is disarming. On the day we spoke, Vargas Jasa explained how her experience as a first-generation American is a big part of what led her to become president and CEO of Valley of the Sun United Way. “My dad was a leader of the student movement against the dictatorship in Paraguay, which was the longest-running dictatorship in the southern hemisphere of the 20 th century,” she said. “Because of his leadership, he was arrested, jailed and tortured several times and, at one point, escaped from a military hospital.” Vargas Jasa’s parents were blacklisted and fled the country, heading to Penn State, where her father would earn his doctorate. Vargas Jasa was born while her parents were living in international student housing there in State College, Penn. This began a peripatetic childhood, being raised the only child of an academic father and a mother who taught her child English as her first language, even though she barely spoke it herself. “My mom knew that they would never be able to move back to Paraguay, and they wanted to raise me in the States,” Vargas Jasa said. COVER STORY { by karen werner } Some of Vargas Jasa’s earliest memories include Tucson, where her father was a University of Arizona professor. “I remember playing in the washes with my friends, building forts. I remember going to Mount Lemmon and seeing snow for the first time. I have really fond memories of Arizona,” Vargas Jasa said. It was a far cry from what her parents had experienced in Paraguay, and what she saw herself as a young child when the family lived in Guadalajara at other times in her childhood. “You would see a beautiful home — like a luxurious home — across the street from a family that built their house out of corrugated metal and cardboard,” she said. The disparities motivated her to want to help others around the world, and her time in Mexico made her fluent in Spanish. Inspired by what she’d seen, motivated to do good, and armed with aspirations of becoming an international human rights lawyer, Vargas Jasa headed for UC Berkeley to major in political science. She landed there in 1992, on the heels of the Rodney King verdict, and saw important issues all around. “There were riots and looting all over the campus and city. There’s also a homeless issue in Berkeley,” she said. Walking down Telegraph Avenue and seeing people experiencing homelessness every day made her realize that human rights work could begin at home.

FRONTDOORS MEDIA | 55 | NOV/DEC 2021 Carla Vargas Jasa reflects on the difficult, critical and fun decisions that led her to lead Valley of the Sun United Way