Dr. Michelle Carrera: Building Bridges from Poverty to Prosperity
When your car breaks down and you don't lose sleep over the repair bill—that's when you know you've truly escaped poverty.
Dr. Michelle Carrera Morales understands this moment intimately, both from her own journey growing up in an economically disadvantaged community in Puerto Rico and from her work helping Philadelphia families reach that same milestone. As Executive Director of Xiente, she’s pioneering a comprehensive approach to economic mobility that goes far beyond traditional social services. Through innovative programs like guaranteed basic income pilots and individualized economic counseling, Michelle is proving that with the right support system, families can move from survival mode to sustainable prosperity.
Dr. Michelle Carrera is a 2025 Philadelphia Family Women of Influence Award Winner
Philadelphia Family’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Michelle was nominated by 2024 Women of Influence Award Winner and owner of Achieving Good Communications, Stef Arck-Baynes, and selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change in her community. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to foster a sense of belonging and empowerment for all for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.
Beyond the awards, our Women of Influence Luncheons and Speed Networking Night attendees come together as our Women of Influence Network, a community fostering connections, collaboration, and mutual support.
The Power of Lived Experience
“Growing up in poverty is a gift that will give you the resiliency to try things that other people are not willing to try,” Michelle reflects. “Because when you come from nothing, you can always start over.” This perspective shapes everything about how she leads Xiente and approaches the work of economic mobility.
The organization’s name itself reflects this understanding. “We picked the word Xiente because it sounds like ‘siente’ in Spanish, which means ‘to feel,'” she explains. “We know how it feels—we know what our families are feeling. We know how it feels to be poor.”
This connection keeps Michelle grounded even as she scales her impact. “I’m the CEO that doesn’t mind putting the sneakers on and spending the day in the field because you need to keep yourself grounded and you need to always remember why you’re here on this earth. I feel my purpose is to help alleviate poverty.”
From International Recognition to Local Innovation
Michelle’s approach to poverty alleviation gained international validation when she was selected as a 2023 Eisenhower Fellow—the only Philadelphia recipient that year. Though her original fellowship was set for Egypt and the Netherlands, the war in Israel redirected her to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Brazil, where she discovered approaches that are now transforming her work in Philadelphia.
“The biggest lesson from the Netherlands and Belgium is that their social safety net is based on providing people direct cash assistance and that sense of agency,” Michelle explains. “In the United States, we say here’s a card for food, here’s a voucher for housing. In Europe, they give people a lump sum and that person decides how to lift themselves out of their current situation.”
This insight became the foundation for one of Xiente’s most innovative programs: a basic guaranteed income pilot serving 10 families who receive direct cash assistance combined with affordable housing units. The results have been remarkable—increased credit scores, reduced stress, and families establishing concrete goals for their futures.
The Prosperity Project: A New Model for Economic Mobility
Since 2023, Michelle has launched Xiente’s flagship initiative: The Prosperity Project, designed to serve 200 families with individualized economic mobility services over five years. “Each family has almost a concierge of economic mobility,” she describes.
What makes this program unique is how families themselves shaped its design. Through focus groups, Michelle learned that families needed specialized support rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. Now, instead of a single economic mobility counselor, families work with a team of specialists—one focused on finance, another on social support for challenges like healthcare navigation, and a third dedicated to building social connections that advance their goals.
“From them we learned that they needed a group of people, not only one person focusing with them,” Michelle notes. Families also expressed interest in entrepreneurship as an exit strategy from poverty, leading Xiente to integrate business development support alongside traditional workforce training.
Meeting Families Where They Are
Their mobile preschool program has evolved based on community needs as well. Originally designed to support informal childcare providers, Michelle and her team pivoted when they received overwhelming requests from stay-at-home parents who weren’t ready to send their children to formal preschools and immigrant families who initially felt unsafe accessing formal services.
“We tackled both of those populations and continue to work that way—more for stay-at-home parents,” Michelle explains. This flexibility exemplifies her approach: designing programs based on what families actually need, not what organizations think they should want.
Measuring Success Beyond Numbers
For Michelle, true success looks different than traditional metrics. “Beyond having money in your bank account so that if your car breaks down, you’re not going to lose sleep,” she explains, “you define it by quality of life—families that are healthier, not just physically but also mentally because they don’t have the stress of poverty weighing them down.”
Success means families can take their children on vacations they’ve never been able to afford before, providing exposure to cultural activities that other classes take for granted. It’s about “walking into a house that you know is healthy in a neighborhood that you know is safe, without the stress of feeling that you’re always in survivor mode.”
The ultimate goal? “That moment where you say, ‘I did it.’ That moment where you feel you’re not surviving anymore, that you can breathe and say, ‘I’m okay. If something happens, I have savings. I have a roof over my head that I can control and my children are on the path to make it even better than me economically.'”
Building Anti-Displacement Strategies
As gentrification transforms Philadelphia neighborhoods, Michelle is working proactively to ensure families benefit from the changes rather than be displaced by them. Xiente currently manages 65 units of affordable housing with plans to expand to over 200 units, and they’ve created a land trust to preserve affordability for 30 years.
“What we haven’t been successful in doing as a society is how you truly create cross-class neighborhoods,” Michelle observes. “Neighborhoods that are really integrated where we lift each other up and it’s not a one-way street. It’s not that the gentrifiers can provide access to our families in terms of social networking, but our families can also provide a set of values and resiliency that everyone can benefit from.”
A Vision for Systemic Change
Michelle serves over 2,000 families annually through Xiente’s programs, but her vision extends beyond individual success stories to systemic transformation. “We really need a systemic plan to approach poverty,” she emphasizes. “You cannot address housing if you don’t address education. You cannot address education if you don’t address housing.”
Currently expanding beyond Philadelphia to Bucks County with housing counseling services, Michelle continues to pursue her fellowship learnings. Just last month, she spent time in Côte d’Ivoire, Africa, helping with anti-poverty programs, maintaining her commitment to staying connected to grassroots work even as her influence grows.
Staying Grounded in Purpose
Despite her expanding responsibilities and recognition, Michelle maintains daily connection to the families she serves. “A few months ago I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks in our daycare, one of our preschool centers, supporting the team,” she recalls. “Interacting with parents and children—you get constantly reminded of why your work matters.”
Walking into the center and seeing “all these little faces of kids three and four years old—they have a life ahead of them and if we just provide the correct opportunities they will thrive and contribute and be successful.” For Michelle, this isn’t just about individual children but about systemic change: “We want to break that generational poverty in our community.”
A Message of Resilience
For women starting their careers or feeling uncertain about creating change, Michelle offers this perspective: “Whatever idea you have, whatever purpose in life you have, you pursue it without fear because we were built to survive. We were built without fear in our veins.”
Her journey from an economically disadvantaged community in Puerto Rico to international recognition as an Eisenhower Fellow demonstrates that lived experience combined with strategic vision can create transformative change. Through Xiente, she’s not just providing services—she’s redesigning how communities approach economic mobility, one family at a time.
Dr. Michelle Carrera Morales represents a new generation of leaders who understand that escaping poverty requires both individual resilience and systemic solutions. Her work proves that when you combine personal understanding with innovative programming and community collaboration, it’s possible to build bridges from poverty to prosperity that entire families can cross together.
