“I’m having all of these introductory meetings across the city, the county, and campus and all of these people I’m meeting are visionaries,” says Leslie Orrantia. “Whether its leaders of faith communities, leaders on campus, civic leaders … these people are saying that Madison has it. We can make it in Madison. That makes me very excited.”
Orrantia has been on the job as the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new director of community relations for a little over two weeks and it’s been quite a whirlwind. “It’s been incredible. It’s truly been a privilege and an honor to serve in this role,” Orrantia tells Madison365 in an interview at Jade Mountain Café on Madison’s near east side. “Obviously, I’ve worked with [previous director of community relations] Everett [Mitchell] in the past in a handful of different capacities so I have had a little bit of insight into the work that he was doing. I have a lot of respect for him. I think he’s really led the institution and led the community in ways that are of mutual benefit. He’s laid a sound foundation of relationships and partnerships and I’m really able to just build from here. I feel fortunate to be able to build off of what he’s already established.”
They are definitely big shoes to fill as Mitchell, who was recently sworn in as Dane County circuit judge, was a very well-known and charismatic leader at the university and remains one in the city. One of the highlights of his tenure was creating the UW South Madison Partnership, a space on South Park Street that encourages mutually beneficial relationships between UW and the South Madison community.
“Everett, like many people in the community that I have as resources, has a really beautiful vision of collaboration and advocacy and thoughtfulness about the future of our community,” she says. “I see him as a mentor and a visionary.”
Did Mitchell happen to leave her anything in the office as a surprise? “Yeah, like, a ton of files,” Orrantia laughs. “He left a couple sayings on the bulletin board that have stayed there about advocacy and the role of the individual – “if you are silent, you are contributing to the problem.” I think that’s something that’s a thread of commonality of who we are.”
It’s a huge step in the career for Orrantia who, while only 29 years old, has already made some impressive connections in the greater Madison community and beyond. As assistant director for the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network within the School of Education, she built partnerships to transform education from kindergarten to college graduation across the state of Wisconsin.
She has also been the vice president of public relations for the Latino Professionals Association, a board member for Sustain Dane, a Big Sister to a young woman in Madison, a communications strategist for the Latino Faculty & Staff Association (LAFSA) Executive Committee, an event coordinators for the American Cancer Society and Keep Wisconsin Warm/Cool Fund.
All of these past diverse experiences gave Orrantia the confidence to go for her new job. She was hosting an event on campus one day when encouraging words from multiple community members helped push her towards applying. “I helped coordinate a breakfast where we brought in Rev. Alex Gee and Carmen Porco, [Centro Hispano Executive Director] Karen Menendez Coller and others at the South Madison Partnership space,” she remembers. “Everett and I are chit-chatting as we were setting up and it hit me: maybe this is something I should apply for. Meanwhile, folks were coming to me from the community that I really respected saying that I needed to put my name in the hat.
“I thought to myself: I do have the relationships; I do have the drive to continue the work that Everett built,” she adds. “I knew that I had a lot of supporters and a lot of collaborators that were pushing me into this direction.”
Orrantia, who earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, is now a primary point of contact with local community and nonprofit organizations and will be responsible for developing strategies to ensure the university is engaged with these organizations and the broader community.
And there’s a lot of community to cover.
“When the announcement [that I got the job] came out, people started to e-mail me and I’m still actually catching up on those e-mails now,” she says. “It was pretty hectic. Everybody wanted to get a sit-down.
“Prioritization is hard. We are a large entity here at UW-Madison, but in terms how robust our program and services and our academics … all of these things are robust,” she adds. “I’m an office of one that is supposed to represent 8,000 people on the university campus and build community-wide partnerships. That can seem overwhelming.”
(Photo by Marcus Miles)
Fortunately for Orrantia, she had been doing community relations work for a while now. She has been especially plugged into the Latino community. “In our Latino and African-American communities, I think there’s a lot of cohesion among leadership there,” she says. “However, I’ve plugged into an identified need — we didn’t have a lot of Latinos on campus that were in leadership positions that were leveraging their access, their resources, and their platform for this greater good of the community. The reality is that the South Madison Partnership Space or [the Office of] Community Relations aren’t the Latino community. So, I’m taking a step back to be really intentional about broadening my understanding of the overall beauty and diversity that really exists in our community.”
As director of community relations, Orrantia is the primary campus point of contact with, and will act as a liaison between, UW-Madison and the Madison mayor’s office, Madison city council, the Dane County Executive’s office, Dane County Board of Supervisors, and other local government leaders and legislative bodies. She currently serves on 15 committees in the city, the county, and on campus.
While still catching up on all of those e-mails and entertaining all of those requests for sit-downs, Orrantia already has developed a plan and a vision that she wants to implement.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought to it. You have to come to this role with that vision,” she says. “Madison is unique in a very beautiful way but has some geographical challenges. It takes about an hour to get anywhere by bus, for example. Accessibility for our campus is really hard. So, accessibility, I think, is building up our presence in the community and building up the south Madison partnership to go beyond even the physical space itself. That’s of big importance to me.
“I think that one of the challenges, too, as we think about our university is recognizing all of our schools and our feeder schools to this institution,” she adds. “We need to ensure that diversity is represented in the same capacity. We need to ensure that we continue to have and to build strong relationships with our schools’ districts.”
And, of course, her job is about building those community partnerships.
“I think I’m just a really opportunistic person and it leads to all kinds of really awesome opportunities for collaboration, for positivity, for engagement,” Orrantia says. “I think that shifting perspectives, both campus and community, and aligning all of the folks that do say ‘yes’ [to partnerships], and to figure out what’s next … That’s a really exciting place to be.”
Not all of the partnerships will be long-term. “We need to recognize that if something is impactful and it’s not sustainable, that impact still matters. So, not everything is going to be sustainable,” Orrantia says. “But value needs to be recognized. That includes building partnerships that may be short term, but that are significant. And building long-lasting relationships between people … really tightening our community to recognize that we holistically are members of this broader community and we seek to support one another.
It’s a very interesting time right now for Madison and for UW-Madison.
“I believe that we have what it takes to be special,” Orrantia says. “I think there are more people here who want to ‘be the change they wish to see in the world’ than perhaps other places and they serve in leadership and advocacy capacities which are critical for recognizing the passion in our community to drive a long-term vision.
“It’s a nice time to transition to this role. It’s a hard and interesting time, but at that the same time it’s exciting because I feel like we have a lot of the right people in the right places,” Orrantia adds. “The enthusiasm is there. It looks like it’s coming together nicely. People aren’t content with resting on their laurels or looking to the past, they are excited about the prospects of what we can be and the potential we have if we all work together.”
