Adam Torres and Felipe Lopez Sustaita discuss You Can’t Run From Your Destiny: Lessons From A Migrant Worker!
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Felipe Lopez Sustaita, Associate Dean, Center for Student Support at Lansing Community College and Founder of Felipe Lopez Sustaita & Associates. Explore Felipe’s new book, You Can’t Run From Your Destiny: Lessons From A Migrant Worker!
Watch Full Interview:
About Felipe Lopez Sustaita
Felipe Lopez Sustaita is a higher education advocate, community leader, and former migrant farm worker. His passion for higher education is fueled by his dedication to lifting communities out of poverty. Felipe works to advance educational, professional, and entrepreneurial opportunities for underrepresented communities. He also regularly returns to work in the agricultural fields of Michigan with his four sons to show them the value of hard work and to keep himself grounded. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and
In 2014, Felipe completed his Doctorate in Education with a specialization in Community College Leadership from Ferris State University. Felipe is very passionate about higher education, as he knows that higher education is a pathway out of poverty.
Felipe served as an advisor to both Republican and Democrat Governors of Michigan from 2016- 2021, he was the voice for half of million Latino/Hispanic constituents in the State of Michigan. In 2018 Felipe was recognized by the National Football League (NFL), the Detroit Lions, and recorded a Google Talk. He was also selected to be a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fellow (2019-2021). Felipe has traveled to over 20 countries and in 2022 he published his book “You Can’ Run From Your Destiny, Lessons From A Migrant Worker”. In 2022 Felipe earned his Black Belt in Taekwondo, and was awarded the Key to the City of his hometown Donna, Texas. Felipe is also committed to teaching religious classes to children 3rd grade to 8th grade.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. I’m bringing on Felipe Lopez Sustaita on the line.
Who’s associate Dean for the center of stu, student affairs. Student support at Lansing community college. He’s founder of Felipe Lopez, who’s Tita and associates, and also author of you can’t run from your destiny, man. This book is the reason why Felipe was, was invited onto the show. He’s a long time friend, a frat brother, and Hey, Felipe, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Adam. A pleasure to be here with you, bro. All right. So we we got a lot to cover today. We’re going to talk about your book. We’re going to talk about why it took you so long to scheduling me to get you on this show. We’ll get into a bunch of other things like that. But before we do, we’ll start this episode, the way we start them all with what we like to call our
what mission matters. So for me, Adam, it’s about it’s about my faith, right? But it’s also about my family, my ancestors, and just amplifying. Their experiences their voice and spaces where
gifts I have give it out first question here what took you so long to book man? I’ve been I saw your book. I was excited I’m, like man, I gotta get felipe on the show and then i’m like a month passed by and i’m like wait What’s going on? Didn’t we send the invite? Did you miss the invite? You know part of it is is I knew I wanted to do it.
I think it’s just like the timing, right? The time I was really busy. I’m just, I’m just pulling your leg, Felipe. I know, man, I’m just messing with you, but, but seriously, when I saw, when I saw the when I saw the the book released and I saw the cover and everything else, which was amazing, I was like, Oh my gosh.
Cause I knew, I knew a bit about your story, of course, cause we’re, you know, friends and we’ve known each other for a while, but I didn’t, I didn’t know the Full extent. So, I mean, I still remember going to go visit you and some of the things that were in the story. And the first time I, well, the only time I met your brother and I’m looking up and I’m like, what?
I don’t, I didn’t think they made Mexicans that tall. I didn’t even know, like, and meeting your mother. And I think we were out there going myself and Rudy were out there going big shout out to Rudy, who’s a Good mentor and friend to many including myself. And and I remember like just starting to understand your story a bit, but I never really kind of knew the full backstory.
Cause when you’re in college and otherwise like that doesn’t always come up. But when I finally got to read the book and I got to know, let’s just say the full story, at least of what you shared up to that point, because I do know there’s some other books that will be coming up in the future is, I think you alluded to in the book itself.
But that being said, what led you to finally writing the book and to finally get in the story out there? Yeah, that’s a really good question, Adam. And again, I, I, I live by faith, right? And so I’m a very private person. And so there’s a lot of things to like, as men, as Latino men, you know, there’s all this these things of a machismo and men don’t cry and all this stuff.
And in, in the book, like it literally took me years, bro. Probably like 12, 13 years, like little by little. And you could see, man, it’s rough. It’s not, it’s not a masterpiece by any. Form or way there’s, there’s, you know, in terms of the writing, like that’s, that’s like 10, 12 years of me writing, putting stories together and in there, I mentioned, man, that there was times where I was crying, thinking of, of things so it was a healing process as well for me, you know, because there’s a lot of trauma that I think it’s carried generation through generation.
And so for me, it was important because. There’s not a lot of us in, in spaces of, of influence. Right. And so it’s important for us to tell our story because our stories matter. And so you know, even a migrant kid, man, just, you know, picking in the field, the, the stories matter. And if I, I, the way I saw it is if I don’t do it, who’s going to do it.
I can’t be waiting for us to do it. So I, I kind of put it out there. My wife hadn’t even read it until like I, I released it. And she was, she was, what are you serious? Nobody. Besides, wow. Some of my two people that edited Dr. Saldivar, Samuel Saldivar and and this other gentleman Joe they both were only ones that had access to like looking at this, like, but I hadn’t shared with anybody.
Like Even, you know, my wife, my family were like, damn, there’s some run ons in there and whatever. I was like, look, this is who I am. I can’t change. I want it to be authentic to who I am and what I am. Right. Take, take us back. So in the, in the story, I thought like, and I’m going to pick out a couple of areas in here and for the audience that, Hey, I want everybody to go pick up a copy of this book so you get the full story, of course, but some of the things that stuck out to me, especially where some of the things in your earlier years, and I was thinking about the concept of just how you were, you based on your size.
So for everybody, that’s not, that’s, that’s watching this, cause you can’t tell on video, how tall are you, Felipe? And you, and like your sons and stuff like that. So people get an idea of what I’m talking about here. So they know I’m not crazy. Yeah. So I grew like by age 11, 12, I was already six one. I am six one.
I stopped growing after that, but you know, my son, six, three, he’s he just turned 14 and then my other son is about my size, he’s 12 years old. I mean, we’re very tall. My wife is tall, so I think they’re going to. You know, hit 6667. But yeah, I mean, size in the fields matters a lot, right? I mean, when you’re a big set kid you’re, you almost pass as an adult, right?
So you’re doing adult things. You know, people see that they don’t see the age or anything. And in one part in the book, I know, I remember you were talking about like your schedule and I’m telling you, I was so obviously you are, you were young at that point, like really young, but based on your size you had the opportunity and I say opportunity to work as a man because you did, you know, you were providing for your family as well.
You were bringing money into the, into the household. So you had that opportunity. But looking back and I think about it, I’m like thinking about the idea that’s someone that young was working that much. It, it made me kind of step back, not just to some of the, you know, some of the issues with that, but also to look at my own life and say, man, what am I complaining about?
Like it gave me a good amount of time to just be like, oh, poor me. I had a whole, a whole 10, 11, 12 hour day today in my, you know, nice cushy air conditioned studio. Like, okay, like, but what am, what am I really talking about? So your book to me was just kind of a good revelation, really, in terms of in terms of, like, what’s going on outside of my echo chamber, outside of my bubble, maybe talk a little bit for the audience.
So that haven’t read the book yet a little bit about those early years and what that looked like. Yeah, man. And you know, I started since I was a little boy, right? When you’re so for anybody out there that that Is not familiar with farm workers, like farm workers, you know, any, anytime you’re having a wonderful salad or you’re eating a cutie or orange, there’s people out there you know, that are doing this picking onions actually right now as we speak, right?
Those strawberries that you get in at the farm. At whatever store you go to whole’s food. Like there’s people out there barely getting paid anything. There’s no unions when the pandemic hit. They didn’t get to like me and you, right? Adam, we got to work from home, turn on the internet. Like these folks were dying, right?
There was no access to anything. And if you were undocumented, you were even in back of the line. But those days I didn’t know any better, right? Like that was my life. Like I grew up. Just as a, as a farm worker, right? So I didn’t know anything else besides, okay, we’re moving to Texas and we’re going to Tennessee, then we did a stint in Georgia and then Michigan and, and we just work, bro.
And, but, but what you were talking about was when I turned 11, 12 years old that’s when, when I became a man, right? Like there’s the, the minor leagues and the major leagues. That’s when I became a pro. Yeah, that’s when I went pro, right? And and yeah, man, I mean, because of my size and I write in the book, right, that I was blessed to, to everything, my skin color, my, my size was designed perfectly for my mission because when I was there, I was with grown men and my day would start, you know, five 36, 6 AM.
I was already in the fields, right. And the shakers. And would go all day till 5 p. m., then run, like literally run a few miles to the packinghouse, and then work till 2 a. m., wait my brother Luis. Would give me a ride home and do it all day, every single day, man. And I did that for several years in the summers and the blueberries picking oranges, picking apples everything, man, peppers.
Like it was hard. And, and, you know, when people see me and they, they’re like, oh, this guy’s successful, like whatever, right? There’s a price you pay, right? There’s a price. I just mentioned all these other things. My dad had a heart attack, man, at 11 years old. He couldn’t come anymore. My mother couldn’t come.
And so you now, now you at the element that you don’t have your mom and dad with you and you’re out there like grinding, bro. And, and. And, and yes, you lose faith and hope because you’re out in the fields looking like, damn, there’s what am I going to do? Right? Like, this is my life. But I learned a lot of valuable lessons in that, like yeah, how to, how to, how to be grateful for the little things.
Like I’m not afraid to take risk and lose everything because we come from nothing, right? So so yeah, there’s, there’s a huge and I didn’t write about a lot of that stuff because there’s so much to write about and you’re one of the things that I, that, that still shine through in the book and I know you for being a pretty positive guy either way and always and always grateful to God and God, you know, Every chapter you mentioned God multiple times, every single chapter, and you thank God, which I thought was very very congruent, and it just matches what you say about being faith based, and not, not comparing one book to another, but just saying in general, when you see an author do that, it just shows.
It’s very intentful. You didn’t have to do that, but you were, you were very eloquent and in in thanking God many times, multiple times per chapter. But one of my favorite lines in the book, and I’m sure I’m going to butcher this, but it was your, and your spirit comes through because I never heard anybody say anything like this in my life, Felipe.
And that was, you were like the Michael Jordan of the field. And I was like, I
was angry. And all that mix is by the grace of God, man, that I got through. And how and talk about the homies Thanksgiving. Am I saying it right? Is that that’s the right name? Homiesgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that came about out of pain, right? Out of like, so what is it? Let’s start there. Let’s start there.
What is it? So it’s a, it’s a, a Thanksgiving dinner. For Michigan State students that don’t have anywhere to go or if they’re international or they’re in state, whatever it is, which there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them that experience what Felipe is talking about. Go ahead. Yeah. And I’ll give a shout out to Juan because yes, I started the event in 2003.
It’s been going 2021 years now. Amazing. Now it’s serving, you know, the university finally took it over a few years ago. But it serves anywhere from, you know, 700 to 1000 people on a yearly base. And Juan has kept that going, bro. You know, he’s, he’s, he’s put in the work. He’s, Captain going for so many years, so I want to give him you know, proper respect for him.
Yes. You know, when I started it, it was just this idea of like bringing like, I don’t know, 30 40 people together and then it just became bigger and bigger. But so many people played a role in that. But again, you don’t have to be a billionaire. You don’t have to be anything like sometimes pain gives birth to amazing things, right?
Like, look at you now, like mission matters, right? It’s a global, global thing that you’re doing. You’re giving people opportunity to tell their stories. And it was probably birth out of pain, man, out of like this urge or urgency or this idea to, to fulfill your mission in this earth, right? You could have easily, like I tell my kids, like, You know, God sometimes gives you one coin.
He gives you two coins, or sometimes he gives you five. Some people bury their their gift and just take it with them. Other people multiply, right? And that’s what really what you’re doing, what I’m doing, right? I’m telling our story and allowing others to tell their story. So talk about your work now, like as you, as you’ve gone through and gotten, I don’t know, every degree there is.
I think I, cause when you talk about like, so if we look at the, look at the cover, I got to hold it up again. Like that’s, I’m so proud to see you wearing that, wearing the garb, like, cause it’s true from migrant student or assuming migrant worker to where you’re at now, like talk a little bit about where you’re at now, cause there is a happy ending in here.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, and, and you see, you see the lines, right? Like, man, I, I earned all those, like, it was a very difficult journey from somebody that was literally could hardly read and write, right? To, to working super hard. So I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t, you know, for my father’s death that really propelled me to, you know, To go for that doctor degree and having this obsession, right?
This obsession that they would have to drag me dead that I wasn’t gonna leave. You know that I was gonna do everything in my power. And it’s a law of attraction, really like what you what you put out to the universe is what you receive. And so everything that I have now, it’s manifested through through things that I was dreaming, bro.
Really, when I was in the fields and I, I write about looking up in the sky, looking at airplanes, right. And all this manifestation. And so what I’m doing now, so I’m an associate dean at a community college and I oversee six units you know, title nine, there’s ADA compliance counseling, student life, like things that.
For people like us should have never happened. Right. I also was able to be in the political office right in terms of like representing all the Latinx people in the state of Michigan and advising to governors, both Republican Democrats in a time where there was a pandemic. Where there was a flint crisis water crisis, so much stuff, but you know, God prepares you for everything, right?
If you would have put me in there when I was younger, I wouldn’t have been able to do it just like this job. I couldn’t do it, you know? And so and I’m speaking, you know, I go and speak at different universities, businesses And what I sell, just like you, bro, is hope, right? Hope that it doesn’t matter where you start.
It’s about where you’re going and the kind of grid and the kind of things that you, you’re, you want to manifest, right? And so, you know, I went from not being able to read to like reading a book a week, right? Like, and being consistent about it, right? Like being, not only just reading, but applying. To my life when I’m reading, right.
And so if man, like I said, I I’m becoming more dangerous as, as the days go, right, as I’m reading and I’m like, wow, okay. And my, my kids are even you know, benefiting from all this, right. Because I’m teaching them as, as I’m driving them to school, we’re just working, bro. Yeah, it’s great. Well, well, I’m so proud of you, Felipe and and word.
I know there’s people watching this that they’re leaning into this story and also into this book. So that being said, if somebody wants to follow up and follow your work, follow you and also pick up a copy of the book. What’s the best way for them to do that? Yeah. So there’s two ways, right? You can, you can go to Amazon and order the book.
Yeah. Directly from Amazon or you can go to my website, which is F. F. L. S. And associates at gmail dot com and you can just send me an email through my website and I’d be more than happy to sign a copy for for anybody or or jump on, jump on the phone, right? If anybody and that’s a beauty, Adam. I think of like, When I published it, there was folks from like Africa, from other countries, like reaching out, like you just never know, man.
Like if you don’t put yourself out there. Like, you just never know, right? And the impact that it has, regardless of race, of ethnicity, of gender yeah, we’re all human, man, and we all bleed, and we all suffer, and we all cry, and and so that, that, you know, so those are the two forms, either Amazon or, or you can reach out directly, another thing too, like on social media if you want to follow Follow me.
It’s a lion chaser, 84. That’s on Instagram or just my name, Felipe Lopez, who’s tight in in Facebook. And then I’ll also say this because I’m a trailblazer, man. Like I started posting, right. Being very intentional. I’m not posting, you know, for likes, I’m not posting for, for all that. I am really posting because.
You know, for the 10 people that follow me, right, that are really loyal it’s helping them, but it’s helping me to write. Like, if I can’t do it for 10 people, how can God trust me with when I hit the millions? He can’t trust me, right? If I’m not consistent, like, I know it’s a test. Right. And so when I post and I get five likes, it’s all good.
Cause it’s not, it’s for the most high, he’s preparing me for the millions. And so if you don’t understand that game, then it’s hard for you to fulfill your destiny. Right. Cause it is lonely at the top. It’s less crowded, but it’s hard, man. And there’s a price you pay. And if you’re not willing to pay that price.
Man, get off the kitchen, right? Or get out of the And that’s a great way that’s that’s a great way to end it if you’re not willing to pay the price. Hey I’m in and for everybody watching this just so you know We’ll put links in the show notes so that you can follow up and grab a copy of the book Definitely want you to pick that up and speaking of the audience If this is your first time with Mission Matters and, and the first time engaging in an episode, if you need an invitation, here it is hit that subscribe button.
We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Don’t worry. The subscribe button’s not going to bite you. It’s okay. Just hit it. You’ll be okay. And Felipe, seriously, thank you so much for. For making some time and finally come in on the show.
We appreciate all you’re doing and I wish you much more continued success with your book and in life. Yeah. Thank you so much, Adam. Appreciate it, brother.
