Business / Leadership / Biography
Date Published: September 28, 2021
What do a single rose in a crystal vase, a box of tomatoes, a knitting needle, a basketball, and a tingling earlobe have in common? They are all signals to Dr. Laura Murillo to live life to the fullest every day. A high-energy, results-focused change agent in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) space, her undeniable passion for life stands as the foundation for her personal and professional brand.
As President and CEO of the award-winning Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, she has the uncanny ability to see a situation, not for what it is, but for what it can be. In Lead in Life, People. Passion. Persistence: Succeed in the New Era of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Murillo guides readers through the incredible, sometimes devastating, and victorious experiences that comprise her success—from earning a doctorate while pregnant, parenting a toddler, managing a parent’s illness, and working full time, to hosting multiple TV and radio shows in English and Spanish concurrently, and being appointed to the Washington, DC Federal Reserve Board’s Community Advisory Council, and more.
She uses her lived experiences as the daughter of immigrants, a woman, an executive, a media producer and host to inform her perspectives and insights as an authority on DEI, guiding corporations, organizations, and institutions to adopt a genuine culture of DEI. In this new era of DEI, corporations must make a solid, lasting commitment to full representation, fairness, and inclusion of all voices in every decision, at every level of a corporation, all the time.
Lead in Life illustrates why everyone in a corporation has value and a voice that must be heard.
CHAPTER
1
CHOICES
We came from nowhere. My mom and I were
running errands for the day and had just finished exchanging some items at
Gulfgate Mall on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning. There H was nothing
unusual about the day, except a feeling in my gut.
As we pulled into the parking spot, I noticed
to the left and front of the spot there were bushes, small shrubs—no big deal.
Yet, something inside me whispered, “Don’t park there.” I didn’t pay much
attention to the voice. After all, we were just running in to return a few
things, and then we would be out and on our way. Not listening to my intuition
that day ultimately changed my entire life.
At eighteen years old and fresh out of high
school, I had the world in the palm of my hand. I felt invincible and I
believed I could succeed at just about anything I set my mind to. I had
developed an unshakable focus and a dogged work ethic while working at my dad’s
neighborhood restaurant from the time I was ten years old. I started out just
piddling around, waiting tables and helping in the kitchen. Over time, I took
on new responsibilities, like greeting customers, cashing out the register at
the end of the day, and ordering supplies, all the necessary tasks of running a
family business. By engaging with the employees, I was able to speak a lot of
Spanish and appreciate the hard work they did every day to feed their families.
As the youngest of nine, I was the one who tagged along with my dad to the
restaurant. I felt a deep connection to both of my parents and was honored to
have a solid relationship with both of them.
With our errands complete, and back at the car,
I slid into the driver’s seat of my shiny red 1985 Ford Thunderbird, a
graduation gift from my dad. As soon as my mom opened the passenger-side door
and eased down into the seat, a man appeared on her side, startling us both.
He pushed her into the seat, reached across her
body, and aimed his gun just inches from my head. His voice was rough with
anger, his breathing quick with the urgency to get what he had come for,
whatever that was.
“Get out of the car now!” He said. “Leave
everything. Get out now.”
“No, no, no!” my mom screamed, shaking uncontrollably,
unable to move from her seat.
With a quick glance at the perpetrator, I took
stock of him. He was about twenty years old, slender, and tall, wearing a green
T-shirt and blue jeans. Somehow, I managed to remain calm, almost too calm.
“Take what you want,” I said. “Just let us get out of the car.”
As he pressed the gun into my right temple, his
hand shook, and I could feel the vibration of his nervous grip on the handle
with his finger on the trigger. When I didn’t move, he pressed the barrel even
further against my flesh. I turned my head slightly towards him and looked deep
into his eyes, searching for an indication that there was at least an ounce of
reason within him, something that would ignite the compassion to spare my mom
and me from any further trauma. Instead, all I saw in his eyes was desperation
and anger. With my mom still screaming and nearly hyperventilating, a
frightening thought crossed my mind. Oh my God, he’s going to kill me in
front of my mother, and he’s going to kill her too. Despite
the urgency of the moment, I felt terrible that she would have to witness such
a scene. No parent should ever have to experience that kind of tragedy.
“Get out!” the gunman shouted, louder this
time, with more anger and desperation and the gun firmly against my head. “I’m
not playing with you.”
Then came the sound, like an echo in a dark
room, bouncing off cement walls. Click! He
pulled the trigger and, with that simple act, had the power to destroy my life.
My eyes shut tightly and my shoulders raised to my ears in tense anticipation,
ready to feel the pain of the bullet entering my head and exploding. In a
millisecond, I envisioned the horror of remnants of my brain tissue splattered
throughout the vehicle, covering my mom, the car seats, the windshield. Yet,
that simple click yielded nothing. The gun had jammed. With uncontrollably
shaking hands, I quickly grabbed the driver’s side door handle and pushed the
door open.
“Mommy!” I yelled. She was frozen with fear,
unable to exit on the passenger side, where the gunman leaned across her body.
With little thought, I took hold of her hand and snatched her petite body
across the center console and out my door, her shoes still on the floor where
her feet had been. In what seemed like one swift movement, the gunman hopped
into the passenger seat, slid over to the driver’s side, and drove off, leaving
my mom and me standing in the parking lot of Gulfgate Mall, shaking and in
shock. I watched the car speed away, the strap of my mom’s purse dangling out
the passenger door. Relieved that we were still alive, I stood there, holding
my mom tightly, and we cried.
In the days that followed, I was terrified that
the gunman would find us and try to kill us. He had driven off with not only my
car, but also with our purses, which included all our
identification. My mind went wild, thinking of all the things he could do with
that information. To help ease my concerns, my dad changed the locks on every
door in our house. We canceled our credit cards and got new ones. I got a new
driver’s license and replaced all the other items that were stolen. Still, I
was in a state of panic, afraid to leave the house and afraid to be there. I
felt like a prisoner in my own home. My mind created scenarios of the gunman
regretting that he didn’t shoot us and coming after us to finish the job. There
I was, eighteen years old, having been held at gunpoint, and I was a total
wreck. My life had been spared and it was just beginning, but I was afraid to
live it.
College was next in my future, and I knew
the transition would bring a very different experience from my years at Austin
High School, where my classmates voted me Most Likely to Succeed, Most Popular,
and Class President, and where I graduated with honors among the top five
percent of my peers. Austin High School is in the Houston Independent School
District located in Houston’s East End.
By the time I entered college, I was working
three jobs—at the family restaurant, at my sister Lupe’s beauty salon, and at a
radio station.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew
up, but I loved helping people and I thought being a journalist, in some
capacity, would be important because I saw so few people in that space who
looked liked me. With so much on my plate, I buried my emotions about the
car-jacking and didn’t tell anyone about the emotional turmoil I was
experiencing, partly because I didn’t want anyone to pity me and also because I
didn’t want to feel like a victim. I was losing days and weeks, focused on what
could have been instead of being grateful for what was.
In short, I was living in fear.
Even more than the fear, I felt a grave sense
of guilt for having put my mom in harm’s way. I blamed myself for not trusting
my intuition that told me not to park in the spot. My poor decision could have
ended both our lives. I was overwhelmed with guilt that I had endangered my
mother’s life. Interestingly, my mother’s response was to panic at the moment
of the attack, but following the incident, she was surprisingly calm and
thankful to God that nothing happened to either of us. Our responses were so different,
and whether I realized it or not, I learned by watching how my mother responded
to the event. She was resilient and she quickly moved on, even though I still
suffered from the trauma.
Thankfully, about three weeks later, the police
arrested the gunman and found he was tied to a string of similar crimes in
other states. That didn’t do much to ease my mind. I was still traumatized by
the incident, and I worried I would never be able to function normally.
Everything startled me. I knew my fears were unfounded since the gunman had
been caught, but fear had carved out a place in my mind that caused me to
isolate myself from the world, from my life.
One day, while at home alone, I began saying
aloud to myself,
“Mom’s okay, you’re okay. Everything is going
to be okay.” I paced the floor of my bedroom, ringing my hands and staring at
my feet as I placed one foot in front of the other. “Mom survived. You
survived. You are here, now, and you have to live.” It was as if someone
outside of me was giving a pep-talk, hoping to snap me out of a darkness that
threatened my existence. I was a young woman with a future, but I had allowed a
terrible experience to paralyze me with fear. I knew I couldn’t go on living
like that. I realized then that I wanted more. I wanted to live. That strong
desire ignited in me a resiliency I didn’t know was there. I realized I had a
choice. I could either let that one person, that one incident, control and
overpower me, or I could use that experience to my benefit, as an opportunity to
strengthen myself. I chose life and made a conscious decision to live every
moment with urgency, to be joyful, more appreciative, more thoughtful, and more
engaged with each person in my life. An incredible zest for life was created,
and I willingly embraced it.
My decision to release the fear and instead
embrace the power to control my thoughts and actions felt wonderful. Somewhere
deep inside, a determination grew that would not allow one person to keep me
from being the best I could be. Instead, I realized how fortunate I was to
survive being held at gunpoint and that I would not let my life be in vain.
Despite how traumatic that event had been,
neither my mom nor I had been physically hurt, and I was grateful for that. In
fact, the incident made us even closer than we had been. It was a strange,
terrible experience only the two of us shared. Yet, I had to choose how I would
live with it. I chose to acknowledge that everything was okay, that I was
resilient, and that I would persist in every endeavor going forward.
I transitioned from fear, guilt, and grief to
joy, happiness, and a zest for life. My appreciation for life grew daily, and I
became obsessed with living my life to the fullest. My focus turned to
accomplishing as much as I could. I decided that whatever I put in my mind to
do, I would do it and take nothing for granted. From then on, I committed to
live every moment with urgency and passion. That single decision was a pivotal
choice point in my life, allowing me to see the power and impact of my
resiliency and the value of taking these lessons from life experiences and
moving forward with people, passion, and persistence.
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