“I have family here,” Figueroa Cole said. “My sisters came here one at a time when whatever changes in their lives were happening. They decided to come and try Madison. I feel like I was able to have a job and a good house back in the 1990s. First cam Veronica, then Heidi and then my niece. They all have made Madison their home and they have all been a very huge force in the community when it comes to community service. And I have been very happy to have been able to support them coming here and become part of the Madison community.”

Figueroa Cole met her husband in Madison and they started a family. As a working family, they shared responsibilities to make ends meet.

“When I first came here, I worked random jobs,” Figueroa Cole said. “My first job was at Woodman’s. And then I worked at WalMart and CUNA Mutual, And finally, I got a job at Promega. It was my first full-time job. My son was already 3-4-years-old. It was the first time I put him in day care. Up to that point, I shared the care hours with my husband because we couldn’t afford day care and we really didn’t want our kid with strangers. He would work a day shift and I usually worked second shift or overnight so that there was someone always here with our kids.”

Figueroa Cole stayed in the technology field for the rest of her career until this past April when she retired to devote time to her other “full-time” job as the Madison Common Council president. It’s not something that she ever envisioned herself doing.

“Growing up, my extended family was really political,” Figueroa Cole said. “They were in politics left and right 24/7. It was something that I always tried to shy away from. I wanted nothing to do with that because politics can be so divisive. And it really was divisive in Puerto Rico. I don’t like politics. This is not a planned stop on my journey. It was not in my plans. I never thought I would be doing this kind of job.”

The pandemic changed all of that. When Figueroa Cole came back to the U.S. in June 2020 — she had been in Puerto Rico when the pandemic hit — her heart went out to all of the unsheltered people she saw. She had been a member of Friends of Sate Street Families and worked with unsheltered people. But now things became more dire.
“Just the thought of having housed people now be unhoused and staying on the streets, it was a lot for me to bear,” Figueroa Cole said. “I jumped back into the roles I was playing here. And I paid more attention to the council business. As much as I appreciated the people being allowed to be in a park for awhile. By the time I came back, we had alders who were trying to penalize people who were in the parks. They were making decisions to manage the unsheltered population and I just felt like they were not understanding what the needs of that population were. So since I had already done it for six years, it didn’t reflect what I was seeing on the streets when I was doing the volunteer work. That was the center of that moment in time when I said, ‘Okay, maybe I can do what I am doing on the streets at a larger level and try to get support at the council level instead of just at this one-on-one level I am working at.’ That really was my motivation first. And then you run a campaign and you have to know more than just that. And then the more you learn, the more you learn about transit, the environment and all of these other things that the city runs and the services they provide. You get sucked into how all of that works together to help not just the unsheltered, but also everyone in the city.”

Figueroa Cole was elected in April 2021 and reelected in 2023. And now she has taken on the role as council president. Being an alder was demanding enough.

“When it comes to constituent service, that hasn’t slowed down,” Figueroa Cole said. “When you become an alder, the mayor assigns you to a few committees for you to sit on. You are a voting member and you are a part of that quorum. It’s your responsibility as an alder to show up for those meetings and to be a part of that committee. If you don’t show up for those meetings and then they don’t have a quorum, then things don’t happen. I am assigned to a number of committees. I think last week, I missed one meeting because I took a vacation with my family. That might be the first meeting that I have missed since being elected. I just feel a huge responsibility for that. Anytime outside of that, I try to make neighborhood association meetings if they don’t conflict with committees. My second priority is the NRT meetings, the Neighborhood Resource Team meetings. And District 10 has three NRTs. I try to make all of those three meetings every month. I don’t go to all of the neighborhood meetings, but I try to make my rounds. After that, you get emails, phone calls, even some text messages. Usually those come in with questions about things that are happening on that person’s street or a problem with a process. When I answer, I handle that immediately. If I don’t know the answer, I tell them I don’t know the answer, but I will get it for them. I contact staff and then staff provides me with the answer. I learn a lot from the answers that they provide so that when the question comes up again, I can answer it myself. That’s part of the job. And to be honest, if someone calls me, I just like to answer the phone and deal with the situation right then and there. I’d rather not have to listen to a voice mail and get back to people. I’d rather just get it over with at the moment. That means people call me anytime of the week. It doesn’t matter if it is Sunday or Saturday. I get calls as late as 10 p.m. I know I shouldn’t answer the calls, but I haven’t set boundaries and that is fine. That’s part of the work. And in addition to that, the committees in the city exist to provide feedback and recommendations to the council. Sometimes there are issues that I am following that perhaps don’t impact my district, but they are related to housing. Housing is important to me. I want to know what the Plan Commission recommended. I want to know what Public Works and Transportation recommended. Plan, Liquor Licensing and Transportation are not my committees, but I try not to miss the meetings or if I miss the meeting, I watch them online after the fact. There are a lot of hours that get consumed. It’s a lot of work.”

On top of those duties, being council president adds to the list.

“You have day-to-day business that you have to deal with in the council office,” Figueroa Cole said. “Every other week, you have to work on the agenda. You have to review it and move things around or add things. That takes time. It’s a bigger responsibility. We’ve had a few times when tough decisions have had to be made. It’s more weight that you have to carry.”

Figueroa Cole is also applying her private sector experience to the council office, documenting and establishing standard operating procedures so that the work of the council is carried out consistently.

As the first Latina city council president, Figueroa Cole as attracted a lot of attention, particularly in the Latine community.

“I came all the way from Puerto Rico,” Figueroa reflected. “I had to leave my family behind to build my own family here, to create my own roots here. And yet, I never thought about doing what I am doing today. And what I am doing, I really feel privileged and I really love the job. And here I am as the leader of this institution. I think it is important for people to see that if I can do that, anyone can do it. From that perspective, I am still learning to embrace it.”

Yannette Figueroa Cole truly is an “immigration” success story.