The Courage to Be a Good Human
Carlos Galindo-Elvira on community, courage, and the people who shape us
When Carlos Galindo-Elvira thinks about growing up in Hayden, Arizona, he remembers a boy who did not necessarily know where life would take him, but who was already beginning to understand the power of community.
He describes himself then as awkward and not particularly athletic, but also bilingual, creative, and unusually aware of the leadership structures around him. Even at a young age, he paid attention to people, to how decisions were made, and to what happened when someone chose to step forward.
Creativity, he says, has remained a constant in his life. He calls it his superpower. But Hayden gave him something even more enduring: a way of understanding how people should treat one another.
The values he carries today are rooted in the lessons of rural Arizona and his Latino upbringing: care for your neighbors, remember that courtesy costs nothing, and never forget that community is everything.
Those values did not come to him in the abstract. They came through people.
Carlos speaks with particular affection about Arnold Mariscal Sr., whom he describes as the greatest political influence in his life. Arnold was not a national figure Carlos learned about in a history book. He was someone from Hayden who showed him what service looked like up close.
Carlos remembers a man who volunteered, helped people, and believed in standing with others. Arnold taught him about elections, but he also taught him about loyalty, unity, creativity, and solidarity. He showed Carlos how to make something out of very little, how to find a way forward when resources were limited and, as a union man, the importance of “Solidarity Forever.”
Carlos’s own introduction to civic engagement came early.
He remembers being part of a group of young volunteers campaigning for Pete Rios. They traveled throughout the legislative district, knocking on doors, speaking with voters, and marching in parades. During that period, Carlos also wrote his first letter to the editor defending the candidate he supported.
Looking back, he sees that experience as one of the first times he understood that an individual voice could matter.
That belief would follow him throughout his life.
His work would eventually take him through nonprofit leadership, civil rights advocacy, community engagement, and public service. The settings changed, but many of the underlying questions remained remarkably consistent: Who has access? Who is being heard? And what allows people to participate fully in the life of their community?
After years of working on and advocating for issues such as voting rights, healthcare, and education, Carlos says he has come to see access to public transportation as a thread connecting them all.
It matters, he explains, for the mother trying to get her children to the doctor. It matters for the student who needs to reach high school, the father traveling to work to provide for his family, and the first-time voter trying to make it to a polling place on Election Day.
Seen through that lens, transportation becomes about more than moving from one place to another. It becomes access to healthcare, education, employment, civic participation, and opportunity.
It becomes another expression of community.
And through all the different spaces Carlos has occupied, he says the values themselves have remained remarkably consistent. Protect a person’s dignity. Care about what happens to the people around you. Learn to separate a person from the actions you may disagree with.
One of his personal rules is simple: “It’s not my job to rob someone of their dignity.”
Another is equally direct: “I don’t hate people. I dislike their actions.”
That distinction matters to Carlos because much of his life has involved working across differences.
His Latino identity and his Jewish faith have both shaped how he understands community, belonging, and responsibility. He often returns to Joshua's words: “Be strong and of a good courage.”
Of all the words in that passage, Carlos says "good" stands out most to him.
For Carlos, strength without goodness is incomplete. Courage should ultimately lead us toward something constructive: protecting people, building understanding, creating opportunity, and refusing to allow hatred to determine how communities relate to one another.
Over the years, that belief has taken tangible form.
Carlos has helped create and support efforts designed to bring people together across backgrounds and experiences. He points to initiatives such as an African American leadership program, the Latino Jewish Seder, and a Latina leadership conversation as examples of what can happen when people intentionally create spaces where others can be heard, connected, encouraged, and given opportunities to lead.
What matters most to him is not whether people remember who began those efforts.
What matters is that the work continues.
For Carlos, their continued existence is the win.
Another part of his story, however, carries a different kind of lesson—one he has chosen to share because he believes it may help someone else.
For much of his life, Carlos was accustomed to being someone other people could turn to. Yet when he has important decisions to make, he says he relies on what he jokingly calls his “personal board of directors.”
At the head of that board is his wife, Emily.
He describes her as practical, honest, and grounded in common sense. Although she is not particularly interested in politics, Carlos says she has an instinctive understanding of how people will receive a message and helps him see things clearly.
That support became especially meaningful during one of the most difficult periods of his life.
Carlos has spoken openly about experiencing a period of profound hopelessness and isolation. In his written reflections, he described reaching a point when his thoughts became dangerously dark.
Before acting on them, however, he did something he now considers critical.
He talked to someone.
Therapy followed, along with months of trying to find his way back to himself. Over time, he says, hope returned. So did courage, purpose, and creativity.
The experience changed the way Carlos thinks about vulnerability.
From the outside, people saw smiles, laughter, hugs, and handshakes. What they could not see was what he describes as an emotional tornado taking place inside.
That contrast remains important to him because it serves as a reminder of how little we may know about what another person is carrying.
Today, Carlos speaks plainly about what he learned from that period: when life begins to feel impossible, talk to someone. Seek help. Do not allow pride, discomfort, or fear of other people’s opinions to keep you from healing.
He learned that courage lies in allowing yourself to be helped.
That lesson also seems to have deepened the way Carlos thinks about leadership.
He does not view leadership as something a person finally masters. He describes leadership
development as a continuum—something shaped over time by decisions, opportunities, relationships, risks, and setbacks.
For more than 15 years, he says, he has had a front-row seat to developing Latino leaders through Valle del Sol’s Hispanic Leadership Institute and helping expand similar efforts throughout Arizona.
What the younger Carlos may not have fully understood, he says, is that leadership sometimes requires taking a risk even when no personal reward waits on the other side.
Sometimes the reward belongs entirely to the greater good.
This perspective helps explain why, when Carlos is asked who he is without the professional titles, organizations, accomplishments, and public responsibilities, he does not begin with any of them.
He is a husband. A dad. A son. A brother. A family member. A voter.
Those, he says, are the titles that come through “love, blood and duty,” and they remain at the center of who he is.
His life has taken him far beyond what the boy growing up in Hayden might have imagined. He has traveled, met national leaders, held elected office, and received recognition for his work.
Through it all, however, Carlos says he never forgot Hayden or the people who helped shape him.
Perhaps that is why his message to younger generations begins not with achievement, but with character.
Carlos encourages young people to be original and resist becoming copies of someone else. He wants them to know when to take a stand and when to take a seat. He reminds them that respect is something we should first be willing to extend to others, and that when common ground becomes difficult to find, there is still value in seeking higher ground for the common good.
He hopes the next generation will lower the volume and speak with one another.
He wants them to reject hatred, remain innovative, share their ideas freely, and have what he calls “the courage to be a good human.”
He also reminds young people that there will be moments when someone else receives the spotlight.
In those moments, applaud them.
And when your own moment arrives, remember the people who helped you get there.
Perhaps the simplest explanation of how Carlos sees life comes from a phrase that has stayed with him:
Todo da vuelta. Everything comes around.
Carlos believes life is circular. What we put into the world has consequences, both good and bad. His response to that reality is uncomplicated: do as much good as possible, because when life comes back around, there may be another opportunity to grow that good.
The philosophy fits naturally with the life he describes.
People shaped Carlos by investing their time, lessons, encouragement, and belief in him. In turn, he has tried to create opportunities, partnerships, programs, and spaces where others can grow, lead, participate, and belong.
It is also why he is hesitant to place the word Icon on himself.
Carlos is far more comfortable directing attention toward the people and organizations he has worked with, the partnerships that made things possible, and the initiatives that continue long after any one person has left the room. To him, the more meaningful measure is not individual recognition, but whether he created something that empowered others and whether that work continues.
That belief brings his story back to community.
If Carlos could ask his community to carry one thing forward, it would be the willingness to bridge differences and search for common ground.
He believes change can begin with something as ordinary as shaking another person’s hand, listening patiently, making room for a different perspective, and deciding to build a relationship rather than retreat from one another.
For Carlos, that may ultimately be what community means.
It is not simply the place that raised you.
It is whether a mother can reach a doctor with her children. Whether a student can get to school. Whether a father can get to work. Whether a voter can participate in democracy. Whether a person who feels alone knows there is someone willing to listen.
It is the dignity we preserve in one another.
It is the opportunities we create for people who will come after us.
And it is the responsibility we carry for the people around us—the decision, made over and over again, to leave something good behind for the next person.
Todo da vuelta. Everything comes around.
And Carlos hopes that when it does, there will be a little more good waiting there because someone chose to put it into the world.
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