12 Facts About Nelson Merced

Nelson Merced was the first Hispanic elected to the Massachusetts General Court, serving from 1989 to 1993 as Democratic representative from the fifth Suffolk District in Boston, including the Roxbury and North Dorchester neighborhoods.

Nelson Merced was born in New York in 1948 and moved back and forth between the Northeast of the United States and Puerto Rico with his family several times before joining the United States Navy in 1965.

Nelson Merced worked for the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, and took the position of the director of La Alianza Hispana in 1981.

Nelson Merced has a bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut and did graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1988, Nelson Merced became the first Latino to serve in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the first Hispanic to hold state office in the commonwealth.

Nelson Merced held this position until 1992, running a successful re-election campaign in 1990.

Nelson Merced wrote legislation creating an Urban Initiative Fund, and was a key legislative leader for the first bill that sought to establish community reinvestment mandates for the insurance industry.

In 1994, Nelson Merced took a position as the CEO of Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion just prior to the organization's proposed merger with the Escuelita Agueybana Day Care Center.

The merger never took place and, in 1996, Nelson Merced left the organization.

In 2005, Nelson Merced took a position as the Director of National Initiatives and Applied Research with NeighborWorks America, a nonprofit sponsored by the US Congress.

Nelson Merced was a member of the US Commission on Immigration Reform, appointed by the US Senate and sometimes known as the Jordan Commission after its chair, Barbara Jordan.

Nelson Merced was a founding member and first president of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a unique and nationally recognized community development organization.