For Inspiration, Look to Your Own Story

For Inspiration, Look to Your Own Story: Cris Mercado’s Winding Path to Social Entrepreneurship

Immigrant. Scholar. Social Entrepreneur. Immigration rights activist. CPS-CCNY alumnus. Cris Mercado’s career has been anything but linear. He came to CCNY after being denied a scholarship to study engineering at NYU because of his undocumented status. Through an on-campus research opportunity he demonstrated his academic skills and earned the top fellowship for CUNY’s PhD Program in Criminal justice, only to pivot and create his own consulting firm with seed capital provided by CCNY’s Zahn Center for Innovation. Mercado credits CCNY for providing him with not only ongoing support but also a sense of home. He advises future students to find inspiration from within themselves and to develop habits rather than aim for goals, principles that have guided his path. Cris remains involved in immigration advocacy and seeks lasting ways to support undocumented students and alumni at CCNY.  

Please share a little about your background — what’s your story? And what brought you to CCNY?

Just like a lot of CCNY students, I am of immigrant heritage. I was born in the Philippines. When I was a child, we settled in the Hollis and Jamaica area of Queens. I ended up going to junior high school a couple of towns away in Bayside and ultimately ended up at Benjamin Cardozo High School. Going to City College wasn’t my original intention. I was accepted to NYU/Stevens Institute of Technology Dual Degree program in Materials Science & Chemical Engineering. But it was around June of my graduating year, and they told me that since I didn't have a green card — because I was undocumented — my scholarship & grant money was taken away. So while my friends were going away to their colleges, I actually had no school to go to, even though I had a 92 GPA and took all the required AP’s. I went to a CUNY central office in Times Square and found out about City College, where it was possible for undocumented students to be accepted and find opportunities. I came to CCNY and became a Psychology major because it was too late to get into the engineering program and because I loved taking Advanced Placement Psychology in high school. Sometimes when you have no other choice, the best decisions happen.

Can you tell us more about your time in City College? Your interactions with faculty, with other students? Did you face any challenges? What kind of support did you receive from the community on campus?

Growing up in Queens, I lived in a low income area, mostly black and brown people, but I went to schools that were predominantly white and Asian. So when I got to City College, it was different from the high school community, but it reminded me of where I lived. It was familiar, but also different. And then interacting with a large Dominican community was great for me to practice my Spanish. 

The psych department provided a lot of support. One of the professors, Dr. Lynch, a stats professor, guided me towards the stats content in the research methodology. And he knew I had an aptitude for it. And he helped me by writing a recommendation for the BA-MA program in Psych, which led me to a higher level of graduate classes even though I was still an undergrad. I remember taking psychopharmacology. Knowing that I could handle graduate material, even though I was just barely halfway done through undergrad, gave me a lot of confidence to think bigger. I got one of the CCNY research fellowships and received support from Peter Fraenkel, a psychology professor, who helped me in many ways including with interview preparation.

With the support and opportunities I received at CCNY, I was able to graduate debt-free, even as an undocumented student. All of that support, both academically and financially, I am super thankful for the CCNY community.

We are interested in knowing more about your journey. You went from a BA in psychology and then were a PhD candidate. And now you're a founder of your own company, GrantAnswers. How do you think CCNY or CPS helped you to get where you are at in your career?

My career has not been linear, but it has been fulfilling in great part due to CCNY. Just knowing that I wasn't supposed to go to CCNY gave me a little extra sense of motivation to prove myself. First on the academic side, I briefly joined the BA/MA Psych program, and that gave me access to graduate classes like Psychopharmacology as a Junior. Then I got a CCNY Fellowship that got me involved in research with Dr. Peter Fraenkel. The Fellowship led me to a scholarship and ultimately graduate school. At age 21, I was awarded the top fellowship at the CUNY Graduate Center for the PhD Program in Criminal Justice. I was the baby in my program. Because of my status, I didn't have significant work experience. And I was in classrooms with Assistant District Attorneys and FBI agents and that access would not have been possible without all the four years prior at CCNY. And I think what prepared me for doctoral study was the research foundation that started at CCNY where I was able to do research with my mentor professor in the psych department where I got a great stats background. And that's what catapulted me to a PhD study at such a young age and that I can hold my own with established professionals.
 
However, you know, life gets in the way and I had some serious family health issues that I had to help out with. And I was just short of my dissertation so I didn't finish my PhD and I left with a master's. But I started thinking, even if I do get a PhD, I still didn't have the status to actually do anything with it. I can't teach at a university. So, I'm going to have to come up with another way. And that way for me was entrepreneurship. And I started thinking about it in 2013 and came to a point where I told myself that I have to stop thinking about it and just jump in. 

I formed my company GrantAnswers (a data, strategy and product consulting firm for social impact) in July of 2013. And for the first four months, I made $0. I didn't take a business class at CCNY. I had no entrepreneurs in my family. And I had to learn on my own. So, I did some learning. Got my first big break, signed a contract with the New York City Department of Education. And it was about college access. So, I actually helped some students get into CUNY. And that experience is actually based off of the work I did when I was an undergrad and in grad school at CCNY in the Upward Bound program, where I helped hundreds of underrepresented students ascend to top colleges and earn $1.5 million in scholarships and grants. So, I knew I had the skill set. And I used that skill set for the launch of my business. 

Then, in 2014, I learned about the Zahn Center. And I said to myself, “let me give it a shot.” I went through their bootcamp, and I ended up getting one of their social entrepreneurship prizes. Fast forward, nine years later, my company consistently earns six figures, not in just revenues, but in profits as well. And, my company was on a Forbes list and combined with my immigrant story, both have catapulted me a lot of visibility. 

None of that happens without this combination of my immigrant story and the entrepreneurship training that I got through the Zahn Center, and also the underlying foundation of research and academia, both as an undergrad at CCNY and then later on at the grad center.

Do you have any significant memories from your time at CPS? 

Graduation. And it took a long time for me to actually appreciate this. And I was just going through the motions, I knew this wasn't my only degree, but to have my family there, and to graduate from college debt free. To be the first in my family to graduate with a US degree. That was a big moment. My first work experience was on campus, it was helping high school students through the CCNY Upward Bound Program to get the same scholarships and opportunities that were kind of taken away from me. And I'm still in touch with them to this day, they have amazing careers. Because we met on campus, I won’t ever forget those moments where I was helping them with their college essays. And I think the most recent big memory was the New York Times. When they asked me, I insisted that at least part of the shoot was on campus. It was a beautiful photo. Bringing somebody else along who was supportive to me at CCNY in that photoshoot was great. 

Why do you stay involved? What is it about City College that makes you want to stay involved?

It's home. I've done everything imaginable on campus. I slept on campus, I've made lifelong friends on campus. Some of my favorite moments, and some of the most disappointing and traumatic moments took place on campus. I went to campus to kind of decompress. For me, the City College campus would always be home. And that's why I wanted to stay involved. And when I meet, I do some tech training, as part of my company's work with other organizations. And some of them are from City College, I can't escape it. I was helping them get their tech jobs and they're doing great work. It is a constant reminder that there's so much talent. And I'm not sure that they get access to all the opportunities, or I'm not sure that corporations give them a fair shot. Because, you know, it's a public institution. So, I just want people to know that there's some amazingly talented people here. I just don't think they get a fair shot. I'd love to help students and recent alumni with their career paths, as well as find a lasting way to support immigrant students on campus.

How would you describe CPS in three words? 
 
A Leadership-fostering community. There is something about going through CPS that maximizes its students’ potential for leadership. And for me, again, I only see it in hindsight, that training that I got from the Psych Department and the support I received provided me with the foundations and to be the leader I am today.

What kind of advice would you want to give to current or future students?

I have a list. I was trying to figure out which one would be the best.

Chris’s Advice List
Inspiration starts within, so stop looking to influencers and celebrities. Instead, look at your own stories for inspiration.
There is no right or wrong. There's only risk-reward.
There's nothing more inspirational than a deadline.
Forget goals. Instead, develop great habits.
On average, you'll live till 80, so slow down sometimes.
Develop authentic relationships, not transactional ones.

The biggest general one is I think we need to stop looking outside of ourselves for inspiration. Let's start with our own journeys, and our own accomplishments, and fully value that. And sometimes you do need people that help point it out for you. But let's start with that. After that, once you get a hold of how powerful you really are, stop thinking in terms of fixed rights or wrongs. The pathways that we have are not necessarily right and not necessarily wrong. But if people think in terms of risk and reward, they can have better outcomes. And we could also feel better about our outcomes, whether or not they're a full success or partial failure. And, as an example of that, if I had only thought in terms of right and wrong, then because I didn't become an engineer, I would have regarded myself as a failure. But because I thought about it in terms of risks and rewards, I had nothing left to lose, because I didn't have access to employment. All I saw was reward. So why not jump in? And then the third piece of advice is, once you start thinking about risk and rewards, the tendency is for people to think: “Oh, I'm gonna set these goals now, right?” But, goals are actually limiting. Because sometimes we're just not exposed to enough of an experience to see what's possible. So for me, I didn't know entrepreneurship was a viable thing for me until I had to do it. So, I ended up focusing on the habits of doing the research and data analyses,  pivoting and getting user feedback, all of those became habits. That's helpful for me as an entrepreneur and as a human being that interacts with others and wants to build relationships. For me, it's habits over goals. By focusing on habits, I apply them to all the opportunities that are available to me. Those habits put you in places that goal setting could not have foreseen. 

Can you tell us about your activism in the immigration rights movement?

Activism really stemmed from that feeling of having no other choice. Being on campus allowed me to meet other undocumented people. And I started to feel like I wasn't alone in that situation. But at the same time, I had maybe grown more angry and tired at the time, about the situation. At the time, President Obama had passed DACA. But that didn't encompass everyone. And a lot of people felt left out. And that felt like the last hope for a lot of people. So, unintentionally, it gave voice to the people who were left out. And, again, I felt like I had nothing left to lose, it's no accident that at the same time that I was trying to start up a company, I started getting involved in immigrant rights, because I just got fed up. And I connected with the New York Immigration Coalition early on. And there was someone who worked at the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, who knew of my story and encouraged me to continue sharing. And then, I got access to an organization called Forward Us, which was started by tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, and I ended up becoming one of their ambassadors and Innovation Council members. And through that, more opportunities came. I was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and I participated in many documentaries, and I got asked to speak around many colleges to reach out to immigrant communities, and to speak with campus leaders and business leaders about what kind of  policies can be enacted. And, right now, it is still my fight, even though I'm not part of the undocumented group anymore. It feels like there's a lack of progress in preserving DACA or extending it to others. And, I've been telling my undocumented friends to do what they can, right now, to maximize their economic opportunities. So that's my main message to folks. It’s not a pleasant message. But I wish that someone was more direct with me about immigration status when I was younger, and I could have dealt with it a little bit more head on. So, activism is part of  my overall story.
 
Please name all the fellowships you had.

Here they are:
MAGNET Fellowship, CUNY Graduate Center (Top university-wide prize for new Ph.D. candidates)
Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, City College of New York 
Washington D.C. Chapter CCNY Alumni Scholarship
CCNY Undergraduate Fellowship & Graduate Scholarship

What is your current position or job?

Founder & CEO, GrantAnswers