Jose Martinez Takes the Reins as UMOS CEO: From Fields to Boardroom (Part 2 of 3)
Jose Martinez started working in the fields at age four, traveling from Texas to Montana to Michigan and back again.
by Jonathan Gramling
For over 50 years, Lupe Martinez built UMOS into a multi-state human service provider with migrants and their families at the core of whom they serve. In 2022, UMOS had $74 million in revenue and had hundreds of employees providing services in six states.
Earlier this year, Martinez announced that he would be stepping down as the UMOS CEO and that a national search would be conducted to replace him. As it ended up, the UMOS board didn’t have to look far for Martinez’s replacement. On September 1, Jose Martinez — no relation — took over the reins of the organization he has worked at for almost 30 years., steadily climbing up the UMOS ladder of responsibility.
When Martinez was burning out in a job that he was working in Texas, a representative from UMOS approached him about possibly working for UMOS. Martinez had no clue what UMOS was and the work they did. Once he learned, Martinez was interested and sent the representative his resume. Martinez didn’t heaqr back right away and forgot about it.
“In the summer, he called me up and said, ‘Are you ready for an interview,’” Martinez said. “I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Remember I sent you an application and said we would look at it? I need someone now. If you want to come up to Wisconsin, we have to interview you now.’ I said, ‘Okay, I will see you there.’ I left the office. This was in June 1995. I met up with him, interviewed and a week later, he made me an offer. I was on a plane headed to Wisconsin. A week later, I flew back down to Texas, picked up my family and we drove up to Wisconsin because I had a permanent job in Wisconsin.”
A week later, I flew back down to Texas, picked up my family and we drove up to Wisconsin because I had a permanent job in Wisconsin.”
Martinez began working in Wautoma in UMOS’ Migrant Head Start Program. 1-2 years later, the person he was working with in UMOS got a permanent job back in Texas and Martinez went with him. And then 1-2 years later, the person he was working for got a job with UMOS again and told UMOS that he Martinez was part of a package deal. Ramirez went back to Wisconsin to interview for a job.
“I was interviewed by one of the board members. He said, ‘You were hired here once. You only stayed for 1-2 years. We invested in you. And now here you want to come back. Why should we hire him?’ He was very straightforward. And I liked his straightforwardness. I told him, ‘I’ll tell you what. You make a valid point. I did leave and went to work for another non-profit. If you give me another opportunity, I promise that I will stay here for at least five years.’ He asked, ‘Well where do you want to go?’ I said, ‘I always aspired to work at the federal level.’ Back then, I was still young. I said my goal was to create an impact. I figured that in the policy aspect is where we have an impact. Little did I know that is not where it happens. But that is what I thought. He looked at me and said, ‘Okay. I guess we’ll give you a chance.’ And I was hired as the RAP director. It stood for Resource Access Project director.”
While Martinez had wanted to work for the federal government to push for change, he realized that the real action was in places like UMOS.
“I figured if I got more of this not-for-profit experience, then I could go on to work for the federal level,” Martinez said. “Little did I know that where you really want to make a difference, where you have the greatest impact, is working in a not-for-profit setting. It’s not at the federal level. It’s not being a policy writer or working in one of those departments because they are pretty much pencil pushers. Those are three realizations that came to me.”
Martinez began a 26 year working relationship with UMOS CEO Lupe Martinez — no relation — that resulted in an expansion of UMOS’ work to other states. In some ways, Lupe Martinez was Cesar Chavez to Joe Martinez’s Dolores Huerta. While Lupe had the vision and managed the organization, Jose was out in the field making contacts and setting up new offices and programs in states from Iowa to Texas.
“It afforded me the opportunity to travel and create partnerships with different states and create new programs,” Martinez said. “If someone said, ‘Hey they are going to pay money so that you can go to this state and create relationships and get it off the ground.’ And I would be, ‘Wow!’ For some folks, they think it is crazy because you don’t know anyone. Where do you start? Where do you begin? I liked the idea of starting up new projects. And when you see it to its fruition and you see the impact of it, that’s exciting. More importantly, when you see impact as a result of those service deliverables that are being provided to our families and you see their lives changing, that’s a great impact.”
And it is the impact that has always motivated Martinez. Martinez is a relatively unassuming, soft-spoken person. But his eyes light up when he talks about impacting the community.
“That’s why, in my younger years, I got into education,” Martinez said. “‘If you can just touch the minds of young kids and help them make a trajectory path in the right direction and they come back to you and say, ‘Because of you, I changed my life.’ I got to see it with young kids. And I got to see it with employees. When I started with some of the employees who didn’t have an education, I forced them to get an education. I made it a requirement. They hated me for it. But then they turned around years later when they acquired their two-year or four-year degree and they said, ‘Because of you, I have a sustainable wage.’ That’s impact.”
When Martinez says that the work is not about him and what it brings to him as a person, his words are very believable. It’s not about him. It’s about the community and the people who live in it.
“I never really aspired to do something to get recognition,” Martinez said, who has pretty much stayed out of the lime light during his UMOS tenure. “One of the things that my wife always tell me is ‘You need to toot your horn. You never toot your own horn.’ That’s not who we are. It’s not our culture to toot your horn. For me, I would rather toot the horn of other people around me, to give credit to them. When you think about the different roles we have in life, for me, I always feel that I was in the role of being a servant. My belief system aligns very well with what I do and the work that we do. That means that if God has given us talent and we use that talent to make an impact in this world, then we are fulfilling the will of God. The way that I saw it was this was part of God’s work and vision that we create an impact to change the lives of those individuals who are struggling and how because of those services that we are providing them, they have a better life and a sustainable life. And that is God’s work. And that is the way that I saw it. I never saw it from the perspective, ‘Oh, I am going to do this.’ It’s happened, I think, because of the works that we do sometimes and you get recognized for that. And it certainly a blessing to be recognized for that.”
Martinez steadily moved his way up the ladder of responsibility at UMOS, not so much pushing his way up the ladder as it was other people recognizing what he accomplished and pulled him up the ladder.
“When the director who was overseeing Head Start left, I was promoted in competition,” Martinez said. “I wasn’t looking for it. They made an offer and said, ‘Jose, you are doing a great job as the RAP director. Would you consider taking on the Head Start director’s role?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ Soon after that, I think it was very complimentary that the confidence that Jimmy had. Then I did W-2 Services. Soon after that, I was promoted to vice-president. And then from a vice-president, I was promoted to senior vice-president. Some of that may have been attributed to our larger grant that we got in Texas. I think it was $28 million we received for Migrant Head Start in Texas. Soon after that, I became one of he senior vice-presidents for UMOS. And soon after that, we did expansions into Illinois. Most recently, we got awarded the CSBG Project. To me it’s a blessing. Now we can offer emergency relief assistance for our farm workers who are coming into the state of Illinois just like we do in Wisconsin. And to be able to replicate that in other states is exciting to see that happen. There have been very exciting times. It will be two years ago that we got the largest grant that UMOS has received. It’s close to a $57 million grant to serve roughly 75,000 participants. We are in our second year. The program is in 13 states. And now we are waiting to get our contract to do services for another 11 states serving 42,000 participants. It would be a total of 117,000 participants. It’s roughly $88 million we will be receiving in total.”
And the grants — and the capacity to provide quality services — kept on coming.
“Through UMOS’ reputation, we were invited through the Office of Refugee Resettlement to apply to serve undocumented children,” Martinez said. “It’s a 24-hour operation where we went in in an emergency, not that we wanted to be a sole provider. We came in to do emergency services because in my background, I had run an emergency shelter for children. Sometimes God has his own way. My experience came in handy to put together processes and training staff in how to serve our children who are obviously at risk. They were children coming from Honduras and El Salvador. These were 6-9-year-old children. There were some cases where they had gotten on a train 3,000-4,000 miles. On the dark side, how many of the children were abused? This is why it was so important that I trained staff on things to look out for and things to protect the children.”
Next Issue: Becoming UMOS CEO and Leadership Philosophy