comunidad para baja california

The former technology marketing executive is applying his business savvy to the non-profit world by providing assistance to several villages in Mexico.

Tom Hogan didn’t retire from a software career to enter the field of human rights – he returned to it.

In the early 1980s, Hogan was a professor of Holocaust at Santa Clara University. . (”My friends used to say, ‘He’s a nice guy but don’t ask him about work.’ I could bring down any party…”) In 1983, Hogan met an executive from the Silicon Valley who predicted the area’s future success and recruited him to be a part of the technology industry.

“Anyone who knew me during my 15 years in high tech would not be surprised at what I’m doing now,” says Hogan. “I always assumed I’d go back to teaching and human rights. It was an easy call for me.”

The former VP of corporate marketing at Oracle, Bay Networks, Lucent and VitalSigns Software now splits his time between teaching Holocaust and Genocide Studies and his post as president of Comunidad para Baja California , a non-profit organization dedicated to providing health care and educational services to improve the lives of the indigenous tribes of Baja California.

“You don’t have to go too far south of the border to enter the Third World,” says Hogan. “Most of the villages we serve do not have running water, proper sanitation, electricity, or healthcare.”

Comunidad follows a medical philosophy called “symptom to source” with its aid. Where some groups fly in to remote villages and provide emergency care over a weekend, Comunidad has set up a system of ongoing assistance. In addition to preventative medicine and follow-up care, the regular attention enables Comunidad to address infrastructure issues which affect health and quality of life as well.

SandHill.com spoke to Hogan about his experience at Comunidad.

What Comunidad achievements are you most proud of?
We’ve been pleased with our achievements in the areas of water and sanitation. We’ve brought water systems with pumps, pipes and purification systems to communities that used to get their water by lowering buckets into brackish pools. We partner with other organizations that know more about water issues in order to make this a reality.

We’ve also made a tremendous impact on secondary education in the villages. The Mexican government does not fund education beyond the sixth grade. The families are poor so at 12 or 13 years old, the kids are often forced to choose between the fields, the factories or getting pregnant.

It only costs about $100 per year to provide the fees, materials and books for middle school and $200 per year for high school and college. Our “Beca” (scholarship) program is our commitment to the tribal children that they’ll never be denied an education because of heritage or poverty.

How did your experience in the software industry shape your involvement with Comunidad?
We run Comunidad as a true startup. We are always applying the rules of Silicon Valley and other startups to what we’re doing.

For example, our organization and business plan are structured around the needs of the indigenous people – not the capabilities of our volunteers. This allows us to identify resources we need in terms of volunteers and funding.

We use MBOs (management by objective.) and spreadsheet grids for each project. Think about a spreadsheet with the rows as tribes and the columns as programs. When a donor comes to us, we can show that person exactly where the needs are and how much they cost. For $13,000 you can immunize an entire tribe against hepatitis. For $48,000, you can fund a whole village and take it from the 17th century to the 21st century.

What have you learned running Comunidad that you feel software executives would benefit from?
When I used to speak at industry conferences, I would start by telling them that high-tech marketing is like one of those bad first dates where the guy goes on and on about himself and then finally stops and says. “…But enough about me, let’s talk about things I like to do…”

High tech companies are often similar: “…But enough about features, let’s talk specifications…” They become so enamored of their product that they lose sight of the market and the original problem the product was generated to solve.

To ensure that we don’t lose sight of our clients, we created a program we call, “Representante.” This program assigns each village a Representante. The volunteer is fluent in Spanish and specializes in understanding the life and needs of a particular community. While we are in the village running a medical or dental clinic, the Representante is visiting homes and schools, assessing how various programs are working and what is needed for the next visit. The Representantes are trusted, stable sources of assistance and advice and become advocates for the village.

In essence, we treat the indigenous people as if they were a market. Rather than us coming in and saying, “Isn’t it a drag that you don’t have this, this and that,” and starting work on those issues, the Representante can tell us that “that” is actually number 10 on the community’s priority list. And on medical trips, the Representante can prioritize our activities, saying “Next trip, reset Jaime’s leg first, and then check out Sonya’s eye problem.” One Representante noticed an increasing incidence of cervical cancer in her tribal community. The information enabled us to test all the women in the village on the next trip and to begin the process of identifying the source of the problem.

Software vendors could deploy Representantes to “live” with important clients. This person is not a spy but an ambassador who experiences life through the marketplace’s eyes. The Representante would become the client’s advocate within the software company and could provide information during the product development and marketing process, and prevent the vendor from veering away from what really matters to the client.

Of course, many companies have user groups and conferences to stay in touch with customers which can be very effective. But I believe that a true Representante program would be worth its weight in gold to software vendors. It is a different way of doing things but a very productive one.

To find out more about Comunidad, visit www.bajacomunidad.org or email Tom at thogan@bajacomunidad.org.

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