As a boy being raised in Goleta, Ernesto Paredes had some early exposure to the value of nonprofit organizations.
“I was lucky enough to have grown up here,” he recalled. “I was a Boys Club kid. I’ve always known about this nonprofit thing. They do a lot of good things in the community.”
But Paredes’ route to becoming a professional in the nonprofit world — today he is the longtime executive director of Easy Lift Transportation — was not without its challenges.
“I really had a hard time in school,” he told Noozhawk. “I was able to get through, but it was not easy. My worst experiences were through education, unfortunately.
“I was a classic C student, and I thought, ‘I don’t feel like an average person.’ But my grades reflect average. Then I thought, I want to be more than average. I don’t want an average life.”
Paredes attended San Marcos High School, then went on to Santa Barbara City College, which set him on the path to academic success. He transferred to USC, following in his older brother’s footsteps, and after taking a class in gerontology, decided to pursue that field for his degree.
After graduation, he followed his girlfriend — Jenifer, now his wife of 30 years — back to his hometown.
Today, Paredes is anything but average, and to prove the point, he has been named by the Santa Barbara Foundation as its 75th Man of the Year. He will be honored Wednesday at a luncheon at the Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club, along with Woman of the Year Joni Meisel.
Paredes talks about his endeavors in the nonprofit world as though they are part of a true calling.
“I love it, because I found my genius later in life,” he said, “and that’s my love for people and people’s stories.”
At Easy Lift, he said, it’s about more than providing transportation for seniors and others in need.
“Like anything else in the human services world, it’s the stories, it’s the people and the families,” Paredes said. “I’m definitely not a car guy. A new van, that doesn’t overly excite me. It’s what we’re able to do, the access we provide for people in the community.
“Because I’ve been here as long as I have, I put that responsibility on myself, to make sure that we’re providing the best service … That’s our philosophy at Easy Lift. Imagine that we are picking up your grandmother, or your mother. And what kind of service do they deserve?”
Beyond his long tenure at Easy Lift, Paredes has worked with the Future Leaders of America, the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation), the Leadership Council, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation and Special Olympics of Santa Barbara, among others.
“We have such passionate people working at the museum, working to clean our streams or the ocean, women’s issues, you name it,” he said. “Such passionate people, and we need them all to succeed to be a great community.”
That’s a theme Paredes returns to time and again in discussing Santa Barbara’s nonprofit community — the need for a more collaborative structure in which various groups are committed to supporting each other, and not just their own causes.
“Look, if it’s all about Easy Lift, my own organization, great,” he said. “But if we’re doing well but nobody else is, where would we take them? We won’t be able to take them anywhere. So, I think, we need to support our brother and sister organizations.”
Paredes plans to share that message when he addresses the crowd at Wednesday’s luncheon, which is co-sponsored by the foundation, Montecito Bank & Trust and Noozhawk.
“If we want institutional change, we absolutely have to come together as a sector and start demanding of city officials and government and foundations, here are the initiatives we need that will serve the more common good than individual ideas …” he said.
“How can we involve everybody? Because sometimes there are people who are being left out.”
Paredes has been described as a strong and effective leader, but to what does he attribute that success?
“There’s a bumper sticker I read many, many years ago, and I think it captured, for me, how I take each and every day,” he said. “The bumper sticker read, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’
“And for me, that was exactly right, because we all come into this world with our own biases, our own prejudices, thoughts that were placed there by someone, whether it’s in school, with your friends, with your work. And then you have to be able to give an organization or an individual your own opportunity to meet them.”
For someone whose been in the nonprofit trenches for decades, Paredes exudes remarkable energy and enthusiasm.
“I love trying to problem solve,” he said. “This is my community, as much as your community, as much as the person who moved in yesterday. It’s their community, too. Now, how can we give back and make it better every day?
“If we can all just kind of think about how to bring our best self.”
Asked how he felt about being selected as Man of the Year, Paredes said, “I truly was blown away.”
“I’ve been in the nonprofit world since my first job back in 1991, and I’ve always heard about this award,” he said. “Over the years, seeing these names of these rocks and these pillars of the community being honored, and I thought, ‘Wow, we’re so lucky to have such great people who care about this community.’
“I just want to be part of contributing.”
Paredes said that stepping into the Coral Casino ballroom to receive his award will be a big deal.
“Being able to have this luncheon at the Coral Casino is very meaningful to me,” he said. “As a young executive, it was always the big place on the hill. You wanted to go, but you couldn’t afford it.”
Paredes adheres to a simple philosophy — one he said he learned under the wing of the late Larry Crandell and which, he proudly notes, his son, Peyton, exemplifies.
“The first thing you need to do is help someone today,” he said. “That mindset of service first. I love that, and I’ll always try to do that.”
— Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton can be reached at tbolton@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.