LEADERSHIP: The Mission and Media of Jos� Mass�; Antioch graduate takes on teaching, radio, politics and now sports.
His resume reads like the cast of a Hollywood movie. The political liaison on the presidential campaign trail. The investigative TV journalist. The innovative high school teacher who makes learning fun. The late -- night disc jockey. The high -- powered sports agent.
Jos� Mass�, senior associate director at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, has led a vastly varied professional life, one that has taken him from his native San Juan, Puerto Rico, to his home today in Boston, where he and wife Didina (also a native of Puerto Rico) have raised four children.
But for every quirky twist and turn that the 47-year-old Mass� has taken professionally, there has been one steady light guiding his way-a need, a resolution, to empower others. Whether it was motivating young Latino families to join the local political process in the early '80s, or helping young baseball prospects from the Dominican Republic adjust to life in the U.S. in the '90s, Mass� has always looked for ways to improve 'human capital,' as he calls it.
'That's why the work here for me is so important,' Mass� said in a recent interview at the center's Boston office, where he has been since last June. 'It provides the opportunity to really focus in on what are the life skills that our athletes need, either in college, high school, or junior high school, and what are the life skills professional athletes need.'
Through outreach programs and training workshops, the Center for the Study of Sport in Society trains former athletes to spread messages of cultural diversity, conflict resolution, gender violence and prevention, and the importance of academics. The center's director, Richard Lapchick, recently established a branch at Walt Disney World Sports in Orlando, Fla., creating Mass� opening.
While Mass�'s present niche is sports, that hasn't always been his calling. He originally saw himself in journalism but chose to major in secondary education while studying at Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he earned a B.A. in 1973. As part of Antioch's work/study program, Mass� worked in admissions in 1971, traveling around the country to interview prospective students. 'When I went to New York or Chicago, I had a good number of Latino students wanting to go to school, but in Boston that wasn't the case,' he said. 'So that piqued my interest. I wanted to know why in Boston 1. Latino students were not interested in furthering their education, and 2. why there were fewer Latino students.'
When it came time for Mass� to complete his student -- teaching internship, he did so in the Boston Public School system, teaching bilingual education and quickly getting to know the city's Latino community. Like many teachers fresh out of college, Mass� soon realized that motivating kids to learn was no easy task. Given the choice between a textbook and a movie on a Friday night, Mass� knew which his students would choose. He saw how the increasingly tantalizing forms of media were grabbing kids' attention. 'I found that many of my students were much more familiar with, and products of, media -- without them knowing it,' he said. '[A] host of different homework assignments would be part of the subject matter we were discussing, but...on Monday, their weekends were very much related to either movies, music, dances, parties, or socializing, where the media...played a role.'
Mass� started writing grants to use film in the classroom. 'I would bring films in Spanish from Puerto Rico and use them as the hook for particular subjects in classes,' he said. 'And the attendance went up.' And so Mass� wrote more grants, and soon his students were filming their own life stories, going into their neighborhoods and exploring their family roots. With a massive record collection at home, Mass� began to use music in the classroom as well, having students translate lyrics. While his students were more motivated than ever, a funny thing happened to Mass�'s teaching aspirations.
'The more I did with video, film, and audio, they suggested that maybe I was in the wrong field,' he recalled with a laugh. 'They said, `You're a good teacher, we like you as a teacher, but maybe you should be doing radio or television.''
And along came one of Mass�'s many 'breaks.' In 1975, he bumped into an old Antioch classmate who needed a ride. The friend worked at a public radio station in Boston, WBUR. The two had coffee, and Mass� learned that the radio station was looking for someone to do a show in Spanish. 'Wow,' Mass� said. 'My kids are always suggesting that I do radio.'
Mass� con Salsa
Soon after, Mass� began a one-hour pilot program at WBUR, a flagship for National Public Radio. When the 'On Air' sign lit up for the first time, Mass� leaned into the microphone and said, 'Buenas noches y bienvenidos...Good evening and welcome to Con Salsa.' Now -- 23 years later -- Mass� is still doing Con Salsa, the station's longest -- running music program, heard every Sunday morning from midnight to 5 a.m.
Mass�, broadcasting live from the empty studio, surrounded by stacks of his CDs, features Afro -- Latin music and strives to keep the format bilingual. 'My thought, being on a National Public Radio station, was that you wanted folks who speak English to be able to tune in and not tune out,' Mass� said. I wanted the same folks...to hear a native Spanish speaker speaking their language. That way I would at least start breaking down the stereotypes with regards to language.
'But I also wanted the Spanish -- speaking community to hear its own language,' he added. 'They could hear someone who is native to Puerto Rico but yet has the ability to speak English, and therefore see that there's a reason and a rhyme to acquiring a second language and not losing your primary language.'
Mass�'s radio exposure inevitably led him to television, where he began doing a show called La Plaza for public station WGBH in the early '80s. Produced and co -- hosted by Racquel Ortiz, it was the station's first Spanish -- speaking program. That led to a weekly public affairs show on WCVB, where Mass� began a series exploring the growing Latino communities throughout Massachusetts. Through the documentaries, Mass� saw first -- hand how the minority communities were being overlooked outside of Boston.
'Everywhere we went, even though the percentage of Latinos was the largest minority community, the city leaders -- i.e., the mayors, police, fire departments, superintendent of schools -- they saw the Latino community as an invisible community because they were not taking part in the political process,' Mass� said. 'And when I would then speak to the Latino community, they would say the reason we don't participate is we don't have people who are articulate in the English language who can serve as the liaison, the leaders, the bridge to the institutions. There was a dire need for leadership development.'
Mass� knew he was just the person for that type of job. All he needed was the chance to break into politics. That break came when his general manager at WBUR, Bonnie Cronin, asked if he would be willing to join the lieutenant governor's staff. 'I was thrilled,' Mass� said. 'I had no experience in politics or in government, but I was thrilled....'
Upstairs/Downstairs
On the day Mass� went to the statehouse to accept the position, he was first asked to meet not with Lieutenant Governor Kerry but with Governor Michael Dukakis, who offered him the state's job of director of community services and Hispanic liaison. 'I was given an offer I couldn't refuse,' Mass� said, 'so I had to quietly say to the lieutenant governor, `I'm sorry, but I've got an offer upstairs.''
Mass� worked 'upstairs' for six years, bringing together those Latinos working in state government to give them a presence and bringing the Spanish -- speaking community inside the statehouse. He helped formulate the governor's civil rights agenda, wrote speeches for him in Spanish, and helped find bright and gifted Latino lawyers who could become good judges. 'It was rewarding,' Mass� said. 'It allowed the Latino presence to be seen statewide. It allowed me to see...how activism can pay off.'
And when Dukakis won the Democratic primary and made his run for the White House in 1988, Mass� was alongside him on the campaign trail. 'Because of the presidential campaign, I was able to travel and expand my network,' Mass� said. 'That network grew and opened my eyes to the fact that what I was experiencing in Boston was not just here, it was everywhere -- the growth of the Latino community, but also the isms that existed: the stereotypes, the sexism, the racism, the classism. I knew I had an opportunity to play at a different platform.'
But seeing the underbelly of politics also turned Mass� off. When George Bush made an issue of Willie Horton, Mass� saw how easily the public was swayed by the media's message, be it right or wrong. 'They painted the governor as someone who was soft on crime, but that wasn't the case at all,' Mass� said. 'But once that stuck, that was the image.
'What I came away with was that, unfortunately, a good number of us citizens...are not as aware or cognitive of what is the role of government...and that shocked me,' he added. 'But it also motivated me to see how I could play a role in educating people in being good citizens, and it also shaped my thinking toward the power of media, both electronic and print.'
In 1989, Dukakis invited Mass� to join him for the Boston Red Sox Opening Day at Fenway Park. There Mass� met lawyer and sports agent Bob Woolf, a legend in the industry. 'What he spoke of interested me, and what I spoke of interested him,' Mass� said. At the time we made a silent pact.'
Mass� went on to work as deputy director of marketing for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and continued his work in radio. But in 1991, Mass� was ready to revisit Woolf.
The Sports Agenda
'I walked into baseball with an agenda, a mission statement,' Mass� said. 'Up to then, my life had been very much what you could consider a public service. I had been a cross -- cultural educator at the state level. I had been an educator using arts and media. In radio, television, promotion, and marketing, all these things always used the fundamental base of bilingualism, bi -- culturalism, cross -- culturalism as a bridge, and I wanted to take that same kind of mission in sports.'
As executive director of Latin sports and entertainment at Bob Woolf Associates, Mass� clients included Roberto Alomar, Juan Gonzalez, Bernie Williams, Ruben Sierra, Ozzie Guillen, and Sandy Alomar. The baseball world was booming in the early `90s, and Mass� was riding the tide.
But Mass� also had an epiphany. 'It had dawned on me during the six years I was working as a sports agent that as gratifying as it might be to negotiate contracts on behalf of baseball players, there seemed to be a dynamic that was missing,' he said. 'I wanted to create opportunities for the ballplayers so that they could grow as good human beings and earn human capital, and I didn't have the forum to do that as an agent because as an agent I was seen as, `What can you do for me that's going to enrich my pocketbook?'...Just like in Jerry Maguire, the bottom line is, `Where's the money?''
The point was hammered home three years ago when major league baseball went on strike, paralyzing the entire business. 'Here you have a body of people who are playing and a body of people who own, and they're all making a lot of money. But because of their differences, the little people are the ones who are suffering -- the fans, the vendors, the part -- time workers, anyone involved with the game. The players and the owners might say they're losing millions, but what's that compared to the person who is losing the amount of money that will help them put their son or daughter through school?'
And so Mass� finds himself today at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, where he combines his talents in public relations, politics, athletics, and education. One of his first projects was organizing a forum last fall called 'Latinos in Beisbol.'
'We see sports as a safe house, if you will, where kids get nurturing, get educated, learn teamwork, learn discipline, camaraderie, dedication -- all the things that are important and that can be applied to other aspects of society and life,' Mass� said. 'And that's why I think we will play a very important role in the years to come.'
