Carlos Huerta, executive director of the Fresno Pacific University Center for Community Transformation, is a 2024 winner of the Locke Innovative Leader Award.

A local economic development professional has won a national award that comes with a $50,000 stipend for his work promoting entrepreneurship.

Carlos Huerta, executive director of the Center for Community Transformation at Fresno Pacific University, was one of five people to win the 2024 Locke Innovative Leader Award, presented by Wesleyan Impact Partners

Wesleyan Impact Partners is a national nonprofit dedicated to investing in church development.

“The Locke Innovative Leader Award was created to honor and embolden innovators across the Wesleyan ecosystem who create new practices and ministries that help more people experience God’s love,” said Rev. Lisa Greenwood, President and CEO of Wesleyan Impact Partners, in a press release. “This year’s honorees deeply embody that innovative spirit, demonstrating what it means to engage our neighborhoods and change systems at the grassroots level.”

The five honorees have created new ways to transform lives and neighborhoods through asset-based community development, creative partnerships, social entrepreneurship, and capacity building, according to a news release.

Each Locke Innovative Leader Award honoree receives a $50,000 stipend and becomes part of an ongoing learning community to nurture their spirit and missions over the coming years, according to the release. Wesleyan Impact Partners has invested nearly $1 million in Locke Innovative Leaders.

Under Huerta’s leadership, the CCT has expanded programs in social entrepreneurship, financial literacy, ministry leadership training and soft-skills job training. The 32-year-old Caruthers native has helped build a social enterprise ecosystem at Fresno Pacific University that includes the Spark Tank pitch competition and the Launch Central Valley boot camp program, 

He also oversees a leadership development certificate program for Spanish-speaking leaders in the Valley.

“Huerta embodies loving your neighbor as yourself and is dedicated to teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship courses through a theological lens in Spanish,” the press release said.

Huerta was featured in The Business Journal’s Executive Profile in the Oct. 8, 2021 issue. He reflected on his very first job and what it taught him.

“My first job that gave me a real paycheck was actually working the almond orchards out in Caruthers, where I grew up. See, before these large machines that shook the excess from the trees after the harvest, a crew of folks would walk through the orchards with 20-foot poles slapping the tree branches to shake off the excess. I think my arms stayed raised above my head for days after that season of work ended.

“I will say that I was mainly raised in a single-parent household where my mama worked 2-3 jobs throughout the year and I found myself out there working with her at times in my younger years, but I’m pretty sure that’s how my mom paid my $3 allowance weekly.  However, when I reflect on what I learned from that experience is that I found that each part of a cycle is important to long-term growth and health. Even though the main activity was completed, the harvest, there was still more intentional work to be done and care to be taken to ensure that the orchards were ready for next year’s harvest! How many of our organizations have that kind of outlook? I feel like this is key to what organizations that grow healthily do versus ones that may stagnate or even scale unsustainably.”