Check Out Dr. Robert Renteria’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Robert Renteria.

Hi Dr. Renteria, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Like many who will be reading this, I grew up in the Barrio of East LA and was born into poverty. My father was an alcoholic and heroin addict. At the age of three, my father left my mother, me and my little sister and the only legacy he left us was a pile of bills and a bunch of empty bottles of booze in the trash can.

My mother worked 2-3 jobs just to make sure me and my sister did not go to bed hungry and that we would not become part of the system.

My mother remarried at when I was nine years old and the nightmare started all over again because she married an abusive drunk. He used to beat on both me and my mother until we were black and blue, sometimes leaving us both bloodied and battered.

As a teenager I found a new dysfunctional family called gangs, I started selling drugs and doing drugs because I was looking for love in all the wrong places.

At the age of 17, my real father died on skid row, broke and homeless.

I decided to make better life choices and joined the US Army which was the best decision of my life, it both changed and saved my life. Not only making me a man but making me a better man. I honorably served our country for over seven years as a non-commissioned officer.

I moved to Chicago with only $200.00 and a duffle bag and got a job in the commercial laundromat industry. Six years later I got promoted and became Vice President of a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange NYSE.

Then I decided to open my own business and three years later we became the #1 distribution company in the nation.

I thought I had everything I ever wanted but realized that the two greatest days in your life is the day you are born and the day you realize why you were born.

So, I decided to give back and took a blind leap of faith to serve a higher purpose and became an author of a trilogy of books “From the Barrio to the Board Room, graphic novel Mi Barrio and activity coloring book Little Barrio”.

We created a curriculum for schools and churches at no cost, so now after 18 years and $400,000 dollars later because I self-funded and made an investment in the future of our children’s education. Our books and program are now being taught to students in classrooms across America and in over 25 other countries around the world.

The Barrio books teach our kids that gang banging and violence is not a life style but a death style and that the ultimate weapon is not a loaded gun but an educated mind.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There are a lot of seemingly impossible obstacles in life, poverty, drugs, alcohol, abuse, however my message is for people to believe that the greater the struggle the greater the victory.

The greater the struggle the greater the victory and that your pain, my pain, our pain is not in vain.

There are no excuses, only those who refuse to make a choice.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I am an international award-winning Latino author, civic leader and motivational speaker.

We have developed a comprehensive bilingual book series and program for K-12 that resonates with the youth and promotes faith, hope, love and academic achievement.

We are bringing solutions that are about prevention over intervention, we are addressing the now issues of bullying, gangs, violence, drugs, suicides, school dropouts, and that crap called racism.

We donate both an academic curriculum to middle schools and high schools at NO COST and also a faith-inspired curriculum at NO COST to the churches and ministries.

The difference with us is we are actually trying to fix the problems versus putting band-aids on bullet wounds.  We welcome everyone to reach out to us so that together we can change the landscape for our youth across America and beyond.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Dr. Robert Renteria is the first Latino in the world to receive two national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. awards for his work as a civil rights leader and a Latino voice in educational reform.

Dr. Renteria is currently in talks with various movie producers to bring the Barrio books to life in the form of a movie and or a docu-series.

Lastly, I am just an ordinary guy who decided that I wanted to help make a difference!

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Contact Info:

• Website: www.fromthebarrio.com
• Email:  robert@fromthebarrio.com
• Direct:  312-933-5619

Image Credits
Dr. Robert Renteria