Staff Profile: Chief Program Officer Antonio Gallardo

For new First 5 LA Chief Program Officer Antonio Gallardo, life’s path took many unexpected turns. At every fork and twist, though, the Venezuelan native said there were people who believed in him, taught him valuable lessons and supported his visions as he continued along.

The youngest of seven children, Antonio was born to an entrepreneur father and a hospital worker mother. His hometown, Barquisimeto, is the fourth largest city in the South American country. It was a place where Antonio never saw racism, where the government provided education and health care and where he and his siblings were forbidden from working until their schooling was complete.

“I don’t want you to fall in love with money,” Antonio remembers his father saying. “That was the message I got constantly.”

But Antonio was first to break the rule when teachers at his university went on strike, and he accepted an offer from a friend to intern as a computer programmer. When school resumed, he asked his parents if he could continue working, and they agreed he could stay for one semester as long as his grades didn’t suffer. That semester, Antonio’s class ranking dropped from No. 1 to No. 2, but he felt he was ahead of his classmates because he was doing what they were only learning about. His parents, though, punished him by cutting him off financially.

“I didn’t know what it meant until I had to do it,” Antonio said. He learned how to be independent and strong, he said, and it helped him realize that success to him meant doing things he enjoyed.

For Antonio, this meant continually working while furthering his education, which eventually earned him master’s degrees in industrial management and manufacturing systems engineering and a doctorate for business and economics. “College was always a way for me to learn fast the things I couldn’t wait for life to teach me,” he said.

A supervisor at his job showed him a newspaper clipping about a foundation seeking applicants from promising young business people interested in studying in the United States. A few weeks later, the same supervisor showed him a similar article about an opportunity to study management practices in Japan. She made him apply to both, despite his own doubts. He won both.

In 1992, at age 25, Antonio moved to Japan – an experience he said changed his life. Not only did he learn about efficiency and effectiveness in the corporate world, but he was with a group of people from around the globe. “At that point in time, I realized that I am a citizen of the world,” he said.

An administrator of that program pushed him to expand his horizons through such things as drama and tennis. “He called me ‘Superman’ and said: ‘You could do whatever you want,’” Antonio said.

The following year, he came to the U.S. to study at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn., where he earned one of his masters and his doctorate. His studies there led him to several career opportunities and introduced him to his first experience in the social services sector at the Iacocca Institute. That was followed by six years with PhAME, an industry-led economic development effort that supported local manufacturing, and three years at the Cesar E. Chavez Farmworker Movement – a national initiative to promote the accessibility of marginalized Latino groups into the mainstream economy.

When his contract expired, Antonio took some time off. During that period, he literally dreamed up his own company. He created FRAI as a consulting firm to help organizations become effective and efficient. He moved from Central California to the Los Angeles area and lives with his two dogs, Giselle and Charlie.

His career path became about helping others be successful, and Antonio said he is looking forward to the opportunity to use what he learned helping more than 60,000 families and addressing adult issues to helping many more people and children.

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