A Chicken in Brooklyn, and Everything After

By: Allyns Melendez

I didn't speak English until I was about six or seven.

At home it was all Spanish. My parents both grew up on farms in the Dominican Republic with Spaniard roots, and they carried that with them to Brooklyn, where I was born and raised. At one point we had a chicken in our apartment.

An actual chicken. In Brooklyn.

To me, that was normal.

Then I started school and had to figure out a brand new language on the fly. I still have a report card that says I was picking up English beautifully and showing leadership potential. I was a little kid learning to live in two languages, two cultures, and somehow I turned it into the thing I was good at.

Because growing up in a Hispanic household like mine teaches you something.

You learn early how to adapt without losing yourself.

You learn how to walk into a room that wasn't built for you and make it work anyway.

You learn that where you come from isn't something to shrink or explain away.

Somewhere along the way I started noticing other Hispanics shining a light on our culture, our people, our colors, our music. And it made me want to stop hiding mine.

For a long time, I kept most of that out of my professional life.

I thought being taken seriously meant smoothing everything down, including my curly hair.

Yes, I was code switching.

I thought if I toned down parts of who I was, I’d get further. Less Brooklyn, less DR, less Spain, less me. It took me a while to realize I had it all wrong.

That little girl is the same person who built HR Transformed.

The resourcefulness, reading a room in about ten seconds, refusing to accept "that's just how it's done," none of that came from a business book.

It came from that apartment.

It came from my hardworking parents.

It came from mi cultura, mi gente, mi corazón (my culture, my people, my heart).

So this is what Hispanic Heritage Month means to me as a founder.

I get to run a company as exactly who I am. A curly-haired, Hispanic girl from Brooklyn. And even though I don't have an accent (not even a Brooklyn accent, can you believe it?), I hope my story inspires you to embrace your culture, Hispanic or otherwise.

I'm proud of my heritage. I'm proud of Brooklyn. I'm proud of the chicken, honestly.

And I'm proud that I built something that lets me embrace all of it and gave me a platform to share the story. 🐓