“The movement toward housing co-ops is very important for low-income and underrepresented communities. It excites me to be able to apply my theoretical knowledge in a practical way.”

David Cruz Ramirez learned early the lessons of being resourceful and adaptable. And now, his translation skills and organizing experience are broadening the reach of Columinate.

Cruz, bilingual from childhood, was born in Mexico City, raised in northern California, and loves to travel. When I caught up with him to interview for this article, he was in his sister’s smoothie shop and buying the warm clothes he needed to take his dad for a birthday trip to Anchorage, Alaska.

Taking inspiration from his parents, David Cruz Ramirez is a natural entrepreneur. After they emigrated to the United States, his mom sold nutrition supplements and his dad started a photography business. The pair navigated the uncertainties of business ownership and self-employment in tandem. “When one business was down, the other would be up,” Cruz said. “I deeply admire my parents for their resourcefulness and ingenuity. I’m pretty sure when we emigrated my parents had an idea of what challenges we were going to have, but I am pretty sure it was a lot harder than they expected.”

Following graduation from UC Santa Cruz, Cruz undertook interpretation and translation work after finishing an internship in legal immigration. “The majority of people we would help were Spanish speakers, but the majority of the information we would give them was in English.” His decision to pursue interpretation and translation grew out of that practical necessity. “Either way, I could see I was going to have to be the bridge between the information and the community.”

Cruz started doing freelance interpretation, and through networking he became one of the founders of Radiate Consulting Bay Area. Through Radiate, he picked up a contract with Casa of Oregon, doing interpretation work to help organize and support the governance of manufactured housing cooperatives. That connected him to the Columinate consultants who were working with Casa on those projects.

He offers interpretation and translation between English and Spanish, as well as consulting on governance, facilitation, public speaking, policy, and linguistics services. He is passionate about supporting the manufactured housing co-op movement in particular. “The movement toward housing co-ops is very important for low-income and underrepresented communities. When there is an opportunity for a family to have a whole manufactured home to itself instead of three, four families in one house, it really hits home. A lot of farm workers could benefit from manufactured housing co-ops. It excites me to be able to apply my theoretical knowledge in a practical way.”

As Cruz says on his Columinate page, “I connect monolingual communities, and most importantly, create a bridge to information and knowledge to support an upward mobility of communities of color or communities in need.”