Uplifting Latinos in the Inland Empire: A Conversation with Jesse Melgar
In celebration of its 80th Anniversary, IECF announced the launch of new Signature Funds, each of which will raise at least $80K in their inaugural year to support pressing causes and communities in the Inland Empire. IECF’s youngest board member, Jesse Melgar, wasted no time stepping forward to establish the IECF’s first ever Latino-focused fund, the CIELO Fund. We’re pleased to share Jesse’s compelling journey that has driven his commitment to his community.
Although Jesse Melgar is 35 years old, his story begins more than 40 years ago with a brutal civil war and a young college student who fled his home country in search of safety, freedom and opportunity. The country was El Salvador, and the college student was Jesse’s father, who, at the time, was studying to be a school teacher in a country plagued by violence. He met Jesse’s mother, a second-generation Mexican-American seamstress at a factory making seat belts for airplanes, and they relocated to the Inland Empire to raise their family, living first in San Bernardino and then settling down in Riverside.
A generation later Governor Gavin Newsom would call Jesse’s story a “California story.” Jesse puts a finer point on it, saying, “My story is an Inland Empire story.”
Born at St. Bernardine’s hospital in San Bernardino, Jesse and his family moved to Riverside’s Northside neighborhood when he was eight months old. They lived on one side of a two-bedroom duplex for nearly a decade, where Jesse shared a room with his three older brothers. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” he reflects. “It wasn’t until middle school when friends would invite me over that I began to realize how different our lives were from theirs.” His friends had larger homes, their own bedrooms, and went on summer vacations.
Jesse’s family was “complicated and dynamic,” he shared. He recounted that though his family overcame many challenges like teen pregnancies, school expulsions, financial struggles, and his parent’s divorce, they remained tight-knit. After his parents separated and remarried, Jesse lived his middle and high school years with his dad, stepmom, and stepbrother in a modest Northside home they purchased in 2002. “We were so proud to finally own our own home, even if it was only 800 square feet, it was ours and we loved it. We still do.”
Despite the many challenges he faced, Jesse was focused and excelled academically. He was a GATE, honor roll, and International Baccalaureate student and he helped his family where he could. In elementary school, for example, he coached his dad on his English and quizzed him on the questions that would appear on the naturalization test.
He remembers vividly the day he accompanied his dad to the Los Angeles Convention Center when he became a U.S. citizen. About nine years old at the time, Jesse and his brother were in the crowd watching and felt proud when they called out El Salvador from the stage. All of the Salvadorans becoming U.S. citizens stood and cheered, including his dad. When the event ended, “We had gotten separated from my dad for a bit in the crowd, but when we found him, he approached us, just completely beaming with pride. He was waving his little American flag. We took pictures with him, and I thought, ‘This is neat. This means a lot to my dad, and it meant a lot to me and to my family.”
His father would go on to earn his GED at Riverside Unified School District’s Adult School and became a frequent voter who talked with Jesse about upcoming elections. This turning point marked Jesse’s first interest in government.
Jesse would turn that interest into curiosity and passion. In high school, he volunteered on several local campaigns including a community college trustee race for Jose Medina, now Riverside’s Assemblyman, who Jesse considers a close friend and mentor. He chaired then-mayor Ron Loveridge’s Youth Advisory Council as well as the Riverside County Youth Commission where he met youth commission advisor and then-UCR student, Steven Hernandez, who is now the mayor of Coachella.
When it came time for college, “I didn’t know much about the process,” he says. “But I applied to UCs because I think it was $80 to submit one application to multiple campuses.” He recalls conversations with his parents, who told him, “Well, mijo, we have about $5,000 saved up and we're going to figure out how to get you through at least the first year, and then we'll go from there.”
He sought guidance from school counselors, teachers, and an advisor on the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. That advisor helped him with his personal statement and she and her husband paid for Jesse to attend an SAT prep course to improve his scores. He applied for and ultimately secured $15,000 in community scholarships, including one from IECF (The Community Foundation at the time).
Jesse was accepted to UCLA, where his scholarships and financial aid covered tuition, but not living expenses. He became a resident assistant and worked multiple part-time jobs to cover the gap. Wanting to stay connected to his Salvadoran-Mexican-American roots, he chose to double-major in Chicano Studies and Political Science, and participated in student organizing and activism as Student Body Vice President and Chair of the UC Student Association. When he graduated in 2009 he became the first and only person in his family to graduate from college. Nearly a decade later, he would go on to receive a full-ride scholarship as a member of the inaugural cohort of UCR’s Master of Public Policy cohort. Former Mayor Loveridge was one of his professors.
After graduation, Jesse moved back to Riverside and accepted a job as communications manager at the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce. It’s here where he met his husband, Angel. Intertwining his communications skills and his passion for public service and social justice, Jesse has served as communications director for Equality California, the California Latino Legislative Caucus, the state senate, and Alex Padilla who is now California’s first Latino United States Senator. For two and half years he also served as press secretary and communications director for Governor Gavin Newsom.
In a full-circle moment—and a memory that Jesse cherishes—he accompanied Governor Newsom to El Salvador in 2019 on a trip to examine the root causes of migration from Central America.
“It was humbling to go back to my dad’s home country, the land he fled. On the flight over, I reflected and remembered being a kid sitting at the LA Convention Center some years earlier watching my dad become a citizen, and everything that led to that moment, and the moment I was in. Being in that role was bigger than me, bigger than my family. I felt a sense of responsibility to my community. It was overwhelming.”