Ric Elias
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I'm 100% both.
And I'm really happy to be both 100%.
I get two things out of this.
But like many other Puerto Ricans that were on the mainland and had some resources, you felt compelled to help.
We raised a bunch of money and flew a plane full of stuff.
And I took a lot of my friends.
We got in four by fours and we got into the mountains and we were delivering baby formula and medicines and all these things and feeling really good about ourselves.
Our egos were super healthy that we were saving nothing.
And I got back on the plane coming back and I'm like, I am such a hypocrite.
I literally have been looking for an opportunity to reconnect with my island.
I'm here today and I'm feeling really good because I deliver boxes.
It's like, if you're really, really going to do something, this is the moment.
So I came back and organized our comms team and they always get scared because I have an idea.
It's code for like, oh, no, because a lot of them are bad ones.
But as I have an idea and we made this massive pledge that we were going to move Puerto Ricans back, that we were going to create real employment in Puerto Rico, that we were going to pay U.S.
salaries, that we're going to train people and fast forward a journey.
And we have five companies in Puerto Rico with hundreds of employees, disrupting banking, disrupting media, really phenomenal.
And it's a movement.
It's not even a company.
All the CEOs, a little bit of a different org design there than we have here or in the UK.