Well, folks. Spring has officially sprung, and we here at DoGoodery couldn’t be happier about it!

This month, we are thrilled to continue our interview series with the lovely Sarita Figueroa, a long-time DoGooder and the Senior Community Relations Manager at SoCalGas.

Working within the philanthropic arm of SoCalGas, Sarita blends her diverse skills with her passion for giving back to communities. You might be wondering…how does a utilities company do this?

In Sarita’s words, “It really boils down to the fact that we as employees live and play and work and raise our families in the same areas as the people that we’re representing, the people that we are working to provide service for. So for us, we want to make sure that our community is thriving. We identify ways that we can help them as much as possible.”

Read on to learn more about Sarita’s story!

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Sarita Figueroa. I am a mother and a wife. I have two kids. I am the Senior Community Relations Manager and I’ve been with SoCalGas now, 11 years this year. My husband also works for SoCalGas, he’s been here 6 years this year. I am very happy with this company. It’s one of the longest relationships I’ve ever had with a company, which is very telling.

I grew up in North Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley. My mom is of Mexican descent. My dad is of Indian descent, so I’m multiracial, which has always been a very interesting dynamic growing up. I think that it’s helped me to understand ethnicities and how your background, your culture, play into other aspects of your life. I went to Cal Poly Pomona, I have an undergraduate degree in English Education. I thought I wanted to teach, but I graduated in 2008, so it was right in the middle of the recession. I had a job at Wells Fargo, it was a sales job that I did while I was going to school. So I stayed there, and yeah, I was at Wells Fargo when it was… not so fun. It was super sales-driven, it was really stressful. Even though I learned a lot about finances, I realized it was definitely not what I saw myself doing for the rest of my life. Once I realized that’s not what I wanted to do, I began applying to utilities like SoCalGas.

Tell us about your career and journey with SoCalGas. Describe your role as Senior Community Relations Manager.

I didn’t know that I wanted to be at SoCalGas. I knew that I wanted to be in a very stable environment, and I always knew that utilities were pretty stable, so I just started applying. It took me at least two years of applying to finally get an interview. Yeah, it took a long time because I had an English degree to teach and a sales background, like it didn’t make sense. One thing about me is I’m very resilient. And I was pretty humble. I was just like, you know what, I’ll do anything. Let me start somewhere and I’ll show you that I can do it. Once I’m in, I’ll show you my skills. I don’t like to take “no” as a final answer. I always try to find solutions to the problems that I encounter. I’m confident in my skills. I know what I can and cannot do. I can’t build the plane, but I can figure out numbers and spreadsheets. When it comes to business, I can figure it out.

So I got lucky enough to be offered a contract position as an administrative assistant. I really got to understand what administrative assistants do. Secretaries run the world. They know everything and they get everything done. As much as that wasn’t the job that I was hoping for, I’m very fortunate that I got that job because it got my foot in the door, and it also helped me learn a lot about the company. It also kind of gave me the opportunity to lend my time to other departments that I was interested in learning about. That’s how I got into this department. My current boss, Trisha Muse, was a Director and we worked on the same floor. Every so often, she would ask if I could help her and I would just take on additional projects, “stretch assignments” as they call them. When she had an opening in her department a few years down the road, she asked me to apply. And I got the job! So I’ve been in Community Relations for seven years. I came in as a manager and then I got promoted to a senior manager about three or four years ago. I also got my MBA while I was working here, in 2023. During the pandemic, I decided to jump into my classes and I completed my degree – with kids and a full-time job! That wasn’t easy, but it has been tremendously helpful in my role because I was able to take on a huge financial acumen part of the role that really never existed.

A lot of people don’t understand our company or my role. They ask me, “You work for SoCalGas but what do you do?” I think utilities as a whole, especially natural gas, can be so abstract. You can’t see it. You can smell it, it’s on your stove, you get hot water, but then what? Where did it go? Where does it even come from? A lot of people don’t realize that we are the nation’s largest natural gas distribution utility. We deliver increasingly clean, safe and reliable energy to 21.1 million consumers throughout Central and Southern California. So, our department is like the philanthropic arm of SoCalGas. A lot of times people don’t even realize that SoCalGas has a philanthropic arm. “Why do you need to do that? Why is that even a thing?” And it really boils down to the fact that we as employees live and play and work and raise our families in the same areas as the people that we’re representing, the people that we are working to provide service for. So for us, we want to make sure that our community is thriving. We identify ways that we can help them as much as possible.

The way I see things, the work my department does is great because we help so many people in our communities. However, I have a fiscal responsibility to make sure that these dollars are used in the most impactful way. This isn’t my money – it belongs to our shareholders.

But we really want to make sure that the money does touch the most underrepresented and underserved communities, just because a lot of times they’re forgotten. They don’t get the same benefits as maybe others do and so we try to go in there and supplement as much as we can. We can’t do it all, but we do what we can.

You talked about working in the philanthropic arm of SoCalGas, and you mentioned giving back to your community with your kids. Has that idea of philanthropy, and giving back to your community, always been with you or is that something you kind of found along the way?

When we were growing up, my parents got divorced when I was eight years old. It was a really difficult upbringing. I think the reason why my mom wanted a divorce was because she didn’t want my sister and I to think that abuse was a normal part of being in a relationship. I applaud her for doing that, but when she did that, we had to go on Medi-Cal and on food stamps. She was a stay-at-home mom, she didn’t have her degree yet. While she went back to school to get her AA, we were on MediCal and on food stamps. We still did great things because of all the programs and services that were available to us. Because we were on these federal programs, we were able to do activities through Parks & Rec at a very low fee or maybe free. We got free lunch at school. If I sold chocolate bars, I was able to go to summer camp. I was a recipient of all these programs that we fund now at SoCalGas. It was always something that was inherent in me, you always give back to your community.

I remember even my mom giving rides to people, which like probably now in retrospect was not safe, but she would give rides to older women who were stranded or like in the rain or she saw them with grocery bags and she would give them a ride to wherever they needed to go. We would be in the car and I’m like “wow, that’s pretty brave. I don’t know if I could do that. I’m scared of people.” [laughs] But like, you know, it’s always been a part of me and it was always about humanity and giving back. You help out as much as you can, without drowning yourself, but you help other people.

I really like that in my role, I get to use a lot of my business acumen that I learned and that I thrive in, but also tap into that softer part of who I am and give back to my community, because it’s very important to me. I can also now share that with my children, and I’m teaching them how to do that. I’m helping to build the next generation of philanthropists, people who want to help our communities and be the helpers, as Mr. Rogers says.

This role seems like an amazing way for you to marry your skills in business and your desire to help others, which we love here at DoGoodery! We work on a project with you that does that as well. Let’s talk about the Climate Champions Grant. What was the inspiration to start this project?

Oh, I love this program. It actually just came to a close in 2024, but it had a great run for 9 years! Yeah, so I can’t take credit for starting it. The people previously in this role started it back in 2015. The reason why we started the program was to build out our network of environmental organizations. We wanted to learn about what they’re doing, what they’re focused on, maybe they can learn what we’re doing on the renewable front. Can they give us some guidance? And just in general, people were becoming more aware of climate change, more aware of what we do as humans to pollute our atmosphere.

So we thought maybe there’s a way to just talk to people and educate them about some of the stuff that we’re doing and if we’re doing it wrong, tell us, help us, guide us. We want their input, too. There’s a lot of people that are open to it and they’ll talk to us. There’s still some that won’t, which is fine, it is what it is. So that was the reason why we started the SoCal Climate Champions Grant. I came into the role in 2018, so three years after it started. I brought in DoGoodery, I think it was 2019 or 2020. The program itself has invested over $3 million since 2015. This last cycle we gave $440,000. We’ve been able to fund so many organizations and the impact has been tremendous. Throughout the 12 months of the program, the nonprofit organizations self-report outputs and impacts of their projects. We can see how much CO2 was taken out of the atmosphere, how much water was saved, how much land has been regenerated, how many trees planted, how many people have been impacted. We still make sure it’s going to some of the most underserved areas, impact the most underserved communities. So we’re still meeting the objective of making more friends, because we’re bringing more people into our network. And now we’re able to highlight these amazing results. Now we are really helping our communities thrive through this program. And that’s just one of the programs that we do, which is great.

You talked about being a beneficiary of federal welfare programs and now we’re seeing some of those same programs in jeopardy, as well as DEI initiatives being rolled back across sectors. How does that affect you in your professional role, as you try to fill in those gaps?

I’ll have to preface this by saying these are my personal opinions, and not the opinions of my company. But, it’s been really difficult to just hear about the stories. People that are being impacted, whether it’s the immigration raids that are happening or hearing about how federal funding is being cut back. And now to non-profits, which to me hits close to home. A lot of non-profits that we work with are being impacted. Some of them are saying they’re not sure how they’re going to do their programming and they may not have services available. So that’s really sad, it’s difficult. It makes my job so much harder because we’re limited on how much we have and what we can do. Some of these non-profits are being hit by lack of both federal funding and funding from private donors like us. It’s really sad because these programs impact so many people in so many different ways. I mean, you can see the immediate impact: the smiles on their faces, the full bellies, a bed to sleep in. You can see that right away. But it can also help them as a person in the long run, it could change their trajectory completely. For example, our workforce development program. We work with non-profits like the Los Angeles Urban League and they help to teach people skills, like HVAC skills for example, and get them a trade certificate. We help them prepare for the testing and interview process. I think we’ve hired about 35 people from our workforce development program who may not have been hired otherwise. These are transformational things that can help people, just given the opportunity.

That’s where I think that our current administration and others who have had opportunities forget that they are very blessed to have had those opportunities. Not everybody was given that opportunity. As children, we don’t get to choose what family we’re born into, what color our skin is, what gender we are. It’s just, it is. And some of it, because of society, puts you at a disadvantage. Those disadvantages can stack up over time. Not everyone is given the same tools to start off. We’re all struggling, we’re all just trying to get by and are doing the best that we can. And that’s why I think now is not the time to be hating on each other. We’re all in this together, let’s work together.

What advice or words of wisdom do you have for future generations of helpers and change-makers?

So, I am a mom and it’s really important for me to be active with my kids and to be present in their lives and in their activities. I can tell you that that is extremely difficult to do as a full-time working mama. We’re super busy all the time, on weekends, with evening sports practices, and trying to also get dinner on the table and keep our house clean decently enough. You know, it’s a lot, it’s really challenging. But it’s not something that I do alone. I have a support system: my husband is amazing, and I’m lucky enough to have family who live close by, and they help out whenever possible. So, don’t believe the lie that you can do it all by yourself because you can’t, it’s really hard. I think a lot of people, women in particular, feel like they have to do everything and they have to do everything perfectly. That’s really stressful, and that’s a big load to take on. Just be comfortable doing what you can do, set your limits, say “no” to things that you don’t want to do and if you fail, that’s okay. You’re not going to be perfect all the time. It’s a balance and I feel that struggle all the time. It’s okay to feel tired and overwhelmed. It’s okay to feel like you’re failing, but you shouldn’t.

Just don’t give up. I wasn’t given all of the opportunities that I would have wanted, but I also created them. I created my own opportunities. We are our biggest advocates and sometimes we forget to use our voices and, so speak up for yourself. Don’t think that you can’t do it. You can do it. You can learn it, you can figure it out. Now more than ever, there are tools like YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, and there’s everything you need to figure out how to build that plane. So you can do it, you just have to have the willpower. Work on this [pointing at self], work on getting this together, take care of this when it comes to eating right and exercising and going to therapy and taking your vitamins. But also, just believe in yourself. You just have to tell people how amazing you are and do the work.