Natalie DiBernardo

Welcome to a special episode of Guiding Candidate Edition presented by Modern Moments Independent News Media, Gilbert Independent, YourValley.net, and the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce candidates.

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Guiding Conversations with Community Leaders.

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Natalie DiBernardo is an Arizona native and grew up in Mesa where she graduated from Red Mountain High School. She has been in Gilbert for 18 years and has enjoyed a career in real estate since 2005. Additionally, her family started a non profit preschool that integrates social emotional learning skills and because of this experience, Natalie has begun consulting with local business owners to help them turn their business visions into working models. She is raising three teenagers, a daughter and two sons and fun fact, Natalie loves riding horses all around town. She rides up and down the canal system and even into downtown Gilbert. Natalie is running for a seat on Gilbert's Town Council as Mayor. Welcome Natalie.

Thank you. Welcome, welcome. Yes, we're glad to have you. Well, we're gonna start with what we call rapid fire.

Alright Sarah, what is your favorite hidden gem in Gilbert that more people should know about?

Well, I don't want to tell you because then all you guys will go there and make it longer for me.

It's only accessible via horse, I imagine.

Yes, yes. So actually one of my favorite places is the Riparian, just because I can take my horse there and then it's fun for me because a lot of people that are in the Riparian are not from here. So. So for them to come here and wear in our cowboy hats and it's the first time they've seen a horse and they're from out of town. It's really fun.

Awesome.

That is good. All right. This is one of my favorite. If you could have any superpower for a day, what would it be and how would you use it?

I would be invisible. I would be invisible. I think as moms, especially everyone, you live a very busy life. And so sometimes it's nice to just kind of drift away and be quiet. So I would use that maybe also to scare a couple people like my kids.

What would you consider to be the town's greatest strength?

You know, for me, it's community. I have watched this community over the last 18 years come together when it matters, and that is what keeps my hope in Gilbert. We are a tight knit community, and when things happen, we come together. And I love that about Gilbert.

Me too. I like that too. What's your favorite outdoor activity to enjoy in our community?

I love all our paths. Our paths. Our kids, My kids, we ride our bikes down the paths. I love that they have the paths along the canals and the freeway because it's safer for my kids. As traffic has gotten better, worse, I worry more about my kids and they want to ride to Target and ride to the store. And I don't feel safe just letting them loose, but I know they ride along. The paths were better and with the horses, too. It's wonderful. So that is what I love. I love we have that. And I don't think a lot of people realize you can get anywhere in town if you follow those paths and it's growing. It's great. Yeah.

If our town were a movie, what genre would it be and why?

Well, I want to say that it would be a western because I'm a horse girl and we were the hate capital. That is what I want to say, but honestly, I feel more like it would be a comedy about a dog. There has to be a dog in here somewhere. Dog roaming around Gilbert causing trouble. I feel like. Yes. I feel like that would fit Gilbert very well.

Okay. If you could have dinner with any one person alive or not, who would it be?

Oh, this is a hard one. I would say it would be President Bush. I know that's super random, but he was the first president that was in an election that I voted in. And, you know, it was 9 11. It was a very. That time changed a lot of the trajectory of a lot of our futures. So I want to sit down with him. I just feel like that would be him or the Will Ferrell version of him from snl. Either one of those would do.

Okay, that would be interesting. If you had to describe our community in just three words, what would they be?

Heart, family, and grace. I think our community has. I've seen them have a lot of grace for each other, and I think that's really cool.

Who is a leader you admire and why?

Well, this is an easy one for me because it's my mother. My mother was. She was the person that anyone was like, I met your mom once, and she changed my life. She cares about me. She always did the right thing. She was just one of those rare people in the world that just was an angel in human form. So that's simple for me. She was fantastic.

What would you consider to be the town's biggest challenge?

I think the greatest challenge we're facing right now is communication. I think that everyone, as we've grown, we've kind of got out of what makes us so great, which is our connectedness. And so some of that communication has broken down, even with neighbors. So it starts with our neighbors. That's what I preach to everybody. But I think that's what we need to work on right now, and we're.

Changing that right now.

Yes.

Okay, last one. Here we go. What's your mantra or words to live by?

So that's another thing to do with my mother. My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2015. I'm sorry. She died in 2015. She was. In 2005. They told her, you have six months to live. Start getting your affairs in order. You're going to die. And she said, no, I'm not. I'm going to live. And she lived 10 years. So one of the last sermons that she preached, because she was a minister, I quote her word for word because here she was fighting for her life and doing a really good job at it. And she said I could try to get it perfectly every time. She said, never give up. Never stop. If you keep your heart towards God and you never give up and you never stop, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. Nothing. So when we've all had a hard day in our family and life seems tough, that's what we say to ourselves over and over again.

That's good.

Well, thank you. We would love to take the opportunity to get to know you and your journey a little bit. So let's start. Start with growing up, childhood. What did that look like for you?

You know, I was very spoiled and very fortunate because I had the most wonderful parents. We had a very. My parents were hippies, so they were hippies. And then they became pastors. So they were very loving. They were very community oriented. We had friends all over the map from all walks of life. So I grew up in this, you know, really agritopia society of everybody loves each other and everybody's great. So I felt real spoiled being a child because I had both parents married for 40 years. They loved me. They moved us out to the East Valley when I was like, 6 or 7, and they became pastors at Word of Grace. And I just felt like, man, life's so perfect. And I just feel so incredibly blessed to have that kind of upbringing because it was just really, really great growing up in Mesa when there was nothing out there. It was a good time there. You know, it was like the Applebee's on one corner. And I basically moved from Higley down and from Mesa to the other side of Higley in Gilber. But, yeah, growing up, we just. We spent a lot of time outside. My dad is from New York, and so when they moved here in the 50s, they went camping. They were really into westerns. So we just became Arizona folks through and through. So. Yeah.

What school did you go to?

Red Mountain High School. And then I went to Shepherd Junior High and Mendoza Elementary. I had really good schools. Yeah, my principal sat on a flag pole all day because we raised the most food for a canned food drive. And then the next year, Charles Barkley came and shaved his head. That was really cool. Yeah. So it's really cool growing up in Arizona because you get to see how much it's changed. And I feel like I was here for some of the best years, like the 90s, the Phoenix Suns. You can't beat that.

Yeah. Did you have a big, puffy starter jacket?

Oh, you know, I did. Yeah. All different colors. Yeah.

All right, let's talk about that time in your life. Who are some of the individuals who stand out as mentors to you?

You know, I was really blessed to have a lot of leaders. I had a youth pastor who is still in my life to this day, who she just really taught me a lot. She was a safe place that I could just go to. And anything I didn't feel comfortable saying to my parents, I felt comfortable saying to her. And she always encouraged me to tell the truth, to speak the truth. And she's. I'm so grateful for her. And then my sister. My sister is only a couple years older than I am, and she's just like a second mom, even though she tries to tell everyone she's younger than me. And then I had A couple teachers who were really instrumental in my life. I had a fourth grade teacher. We had a kid in our class died of leukemia. And she just. The way that she led us through that as children was really impactful for me. And it changed my view on how teachers should connect with kids. I mean, she just. She was our rock. So I still am friends with her to this day. She's amazing.

That's awesome. Okay, so let's go past the high school years. What happens then in your journey?

Well, what happens then? So I was going to asu. I met my ex husband now. Sorry. But we had. So he was in the military. So we went, moved away with the military for a couple years and started having kids. And I have five children total. I have two step kids and my three biological children. I said, we gotta get out of this military because I need to be back with my family home. So. So we moved back here and we've been here ever since. My ex husband and I are neighbors. So it's great because that's what I'm saying about connectedness in Gilbert. Like, our kids ride their bikes to our houses and we stay connected that way. But after that, I became a realtor here. I worked a little bit in the Southeast Valley. When I started having kids, we decided we didn't want our kids going to any of the preschools that we had seen, so we wanted something else. And my in. My mantra is, if it doesn't exist and we need it, then let's create it. So my sister and I and my dad helped form the preschool. We really focused on going away from technology because we just felt little kids, there's a social, emotional window whether. Where they learn what they can learn. And once that window passes, it's gone. So we really focus on self regulation skills. We teach the. We have a program called Conscious Discipline that's nationwide that teaches. It instructs teachers how to deal with children and adults in a way that is emotionally impactful. And it encourages self regulation within the person that they're talking to. So instead of telling kids, oh, don't cry, we're like, oh, that's really hard. You can do this. Let's take deep breaths. So just kind of giving that emotional component to regulation, which I didn't realize at the time how important that would be to our family. Sometimes life is interesting because you get skills you don't know you're gonna need. And so in 2015, we lost my mom to cancer, and then 21 months later, we lost my stepdaughter. Cassera to an act of domestic violence. Her boyfriend took her life and then took his own. So I didn't realize at the time all the skills that I had been occurring with having a husband off at war and having a mother who really taught me the framework for how to handle my emotions, and then having a school and teaching teachers how to handle emotions, that I was really just teaching myself how to handle my own family and my own journey. So that changed our life dramatically. You know, you never move on from something like that. And then we. And we don't. She, you know, you're constantly discovering new triggers. She lived up the road, so I lived on Valvest and Pecos. She moved out of my house two weeks later. He killed her. And they lived on Val Vista and Baseline. So I refused to move. I said, I'm not leaving my community. I'm here. And I think when bad things happen, there is. You want to get away from it as quick as possible. And part of. I think what makes me unique as a human is I'm very stubborn and I'm very tenacious. And I said, I'm not going to let you in. So we didn't move. I'm here. You don't get to drive me out of my community. Bad memories are not going to follow us. I think how you pick up the pieces and move on says a lot about if you're going to survive or not. So that really shaped how I moved forward with the last eight years of my life. I just said, what's most important is my family and keeping this kind of thing from happening to anyone else. And sadly, when I went on the journey of discovery, of trying to figure out why this happened to us and why this happened to my daughter, I realized the world is very, very complicated. And a lot of times victims get overlooked and things that could have been prevented, they get overlooked because they're just kind of a part of a bigger system. Right. He had some mental health issues, and those just kind of all got overlooked. And when you look at all the missing components that we have in our communities, I think it's really important to talk about those because it doesn't mean, you know, I love Gilbert so much. It doesn't mean that we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we have everything figured out. And so to me, being able to dig in and figure out what are we missing? What are we missing as a community that could make us better. You know, Gilbert, we talk about being a city of the future, and to me, being a city of the future is also discovering some of those emotional, social, complex issues of what our government can do. You know, it's not really the government's job to do that, but we're growing up in a society, and we're raising kids in a society that has never existed before, and we're gonna have to start looking at some of that.

Would you say that in addition to sometimes being overlooked, sometimes we avoid hard conversations?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you know what? I find that with my children, Right. We have in my house, we say we don't keep secrets because having the conversation is step one. And oftentimes that can prevent really bad outcomes.

When you look back on that time in your life and that window, what might you tell yourself if you have the opportunity to go back and have a conversation with yourself?

Oh, you know what? Yeah, I would tell myself a lot of things. But, you know, one thing I would tell myself is it's even for me, it's okay to push. You know, I was having conversations with my stepdaughter about her boyfriend and how I didn't think it. It didn't feel right. And she's 21. What am I going to do? So I let it go, and I said, well, I'm not controlling about this. And I would have told myself, it's okay to push it a little bit more. I think even me having the hard conversations now, I know that now. But back then, I didn't know that. Back then I was more timid about the way I handled those tough conversations. So now I'm like, you know what? Let's have the conversation. Leave it all on the table and. And work it out. Right.

What do you do? I know you do some work in that space now.

What does that look like for you?

Yes.

So I really became passionate about working with victims after that. I had the fortunate experience of having some really wonderful people around me that really saved me. You know, I. I tell people this all the time, especially in this environment. We right now, we're in a weird time in Gilbert where a lot of people trust the police and they're kind of, you know, on edge about that and having experience with the police. You know, I'll never forget the officer that came down to told to tell us that she was gone. You know, his face and looking back, him having to give me that news and give me that. It's. There's so much about when you experience a violent crime, there's so many different. It's spiderwebs into every area of your life. And so I Just realized there's a lot of missing pieces in our community when it comes to dealing with victims. So I chose to get involved with victims. I felt sounds horrible. I felt a little bit privileged that I didn't have to go through the court system and go through the process of having to face someone who took your child's life and that whole thing. So I decided to support families who do have to go through similar things. I primarily work with rape victims and it usually involves me walking them through the court process, you know, helping them with their victim statement of providing some of that emotional support through those hard times, just because that was less triggering for me to work with that, but with work, to work with rape victims. But that's what I have been doing primarily.

Is the real estate. Is the real estate part still part of your world?

It is, yep. It still pays the bills and I love it. It's been really good to me. I have, you know, done everything from helping people find their first time homes to doing high end fix and flips to doing some lighter commercial stuff. And I. It's really fun. It gets all of the. I like paperwork. I know that sounds weird, but I like legal paperwork and picking it apart. So I do enjoy it and I still do it. But it's interesting, as you get older, you start to realize, okay, these are my jobs and I love them and I enjoy them, but this is what I'm passionate about. And now that my kids are getting older, I'm starting to focus more on what I'm passionate about because I know they're gonna leave me and I'm gonna be sad.

You ready to jump into some election questions?

We have some questions that we thought our listeners might have interest in hearing your response to. So I will start with, what would you consider your most significant responsibility should you be elected and what would your top three priorities be?

Okay, well, my most significant priority, I think, is being able to tell the residents that I represented them. Part of the reason I'm doing the most, the reason I'm doing this is because I feel like the people want representation. So whether I agree with someone or not is not the point. I told you I would represent you. And so I want to be able to look everyone in the eye and say, that's what I did. So that's the biggest responsibility. Priorities for me are I have a lot of concerns about our budget. You know, I'm a single mom and I've done pretty well, but the times are hard for everyone. And so I think that everyone is worried about that. So I want to dig in and find out ways. I want to make sure that we're saving the money that we need to be saving and not just passing on those taxes to our residents. So I guess I would call that responsible growth. Right? Making sure that our growth is responsible. I also really want to. Let's see, we said three, right? We got one. I think another thing I'm really passionate about is restoring the community's faith in the police. We have really great first responders and I want to make sure that our community knows that. Right. And I want to make sure that we, we as a town are doing everything we can to support it. Even though the mayor doesn't have anything to do technically with the police and the oversight and all of that, I think that the mayor really supports that relationship between the police and the first responders and the community. So that's the second thing. And the third thing is I want to make sure that our community feels safe. And that goes into schools, that goes into just. You know, I've heard so many residents tell me. I had a resident tell me yesterday when I was getting signatures that someone called the cops on her son. Cause he was in the front yard messing with the car door, you know, and it's like stuff like that, that's really. That makes residents feel not safe, but they are safe. There just seems to be a lot of unrest in Gilbert right now. And so my priority is making sure that we go back to feeling Gilbert kindness, community connection, and that we have control over our community. Because we do. We really do. Our community is really great.

So I'm curious, when you say making sure that everyone feels represented, how would you do that?

For me, it's communication. I have been involved and I've gone to town meetings a lot. The last four years. I've been. I've been around, I've been bothering everyone at every meeting I can and I. Even as involved as I have been, there are still areas I see where I don't know what's going on. If I go to find a budget, I'm like, how do I. How do I even see that it's buried deep? The Internet site is not very user friendly. And so for me, part of that is having more study sessions. Study sessions allow people to come and have a two way dialogue with us. I think people are seeking two way dialogue. So you can't feel represented if you talk at someone and they're never allowed to talk back to you. So I think we need to have more town meetings. We need to have like town hall meetings, study sessions where the community can talk to us so they feel represented.

And then let's talk about priority with budget.

Yes.

And do you have any examples of items in the budget currently that you feel would need to be removed or revisited?

Yes. So I am three and a half hours into the eight hour recording of the budget seminar. So we're getting there. I have questions about wants versus what we need. All families in Gilbert right now are cutting back, all of them. And so when families are cutting back, there's an expectation that the government also looks at cutting back, especially with the upcoming projected recession that we're having. And inflation is high, everything is high. So there are some like the riparian center. Even though I love the riparian, I'm wondering, is that a necessity? Can we wait? And I don't necessarily hear those questions being asked. So I have questions mainly about those big budget projects. Do we need those right now? Can those be revisited in a year? The community loves our parks. All of the feedback we get from the community is parks. But I don't think that they're having the dialogue of yeah, but this is how much it's going to cost. Do we need this now? Can you wait? So I think those need to be asked is, can we wait on these bigger, bigger items? Because we do need a lot of things. It's expensive to run a town.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, it is. All right. I get all the fun, visionary, dreaming questions. I don't know why I get all those, but I get them. So here's one. Let's do this one. Paint a picture of your vision of a well run Gilbert for us and how you would contribute to this vision.

You know, Gilbert has done a really good job. We have had a lot of growth. We have created an environment that people want to live in. That's why we've had this much growth. So for me, I would like to see what we have now just expanded on. So I would like to see us have more events that are related to. We have a lot of community events, but for me I want to see more events that are related to the family units. Right. To families being able to communicate with each other, other, to connect with each other. We have large, large. I would like to see smaller stuff. I would like to see things where families can actually talk to each other, take each other's numbers, connect with each other's, become neighbors. I love stuff like that. I think that's really important. For me, life in general is all about communicating with each Other. So I think what we have is great. I think we just need to expand on how the government is communicating with citizens and how the citizens are communicating with the government. So I would personally like to see that. Would like to see the government listen to the residents better. That's what I would like to see.

Okay.

The town is approaching build out, and some areas of our community are aging even as others continue to develop. How would you prioritize the needs of build out with the needs of aging areas?

Yeah, I think that aging areas are kind of the forgotten piece. In Gilbert, we say, oh, Gilbert's new. And then we forget that some of the areas are aging. For me, if it's broken, it needs to be fixed. That is what I say. If it's broken, it needs to be fixed. We can't let our town get to the point where the things that are broken are causing breakdown in other places. So for me, things that are broken are priority number one. And then growth after that is priority number two. If it's working and it just needs a little bit of tlc, maybe it can be put off. But if it's broken, I think it needs to be fixed first.

So, and that's a question maybe to expand on a little bit is do we wait until it's broken?

Ideally, no. Right? I mean, kind of being in real estate, I've seen if you wait until it's totally broken, it's going to cost you way more. And that's why actually Gilbert does. We do do a really good job of trying to predict when things are going to break. The water tower is the perfect example of that. We're already fixing stuff. So we said, you know what, we might as well fix the. The other components of it right now so that we don't have to go back in and do demo again. And we save costs there. So I think Gilbert does a good job of that most of the time.

How important is it to you that all residents feel represented, even those who don't share in your values?

Oh, it's so important. This is so. I mean, this. I feel like a broken record because I've been saying it over and over again. I am the person that everybody's friends with and nobody knows why we're friends. They're like, I would have never pegged you guys to be friends because to me, your value as a human is not reliant on if I agree with your opinions or not. Every human should feel valued whether or not we agree. And that's just a humanity piece.

As a Governmental agency. The town is a complex business and a major employer with many lines of service and corresponding budget. If elected, how would you navigate gaining a stronger understanding of the inner workings of the town?

Yeah, so that is what I am excited about. There's a lot of problems that I pick out from my just, you know, 30,000 foot view. But getting in there and seeing it is what I'm really passionate about with starting businesses. It's amazing how when you change one thing or you discover one thing, it can change the outcome of 10 other things. So I love learning, I love digging in, I love getting ideas. For me, I plan on learning a lot, asking a lot of questions. Asking questions is the best way to learn and finding people smarter than you is the best thing that you can do if you're trying to get ideas and figure out budgets and stuff like that. So for me, it's learning and asking.

And who would you be learning from?

So I already am getting my meeting set up with people from the town I've asked for meetings with. I forgot her name at the moment because I've been asked a lot of questions, but she does all the budgets. So I've asked to meet with her when they done with their stuff. I've asked to meet with the police chief and with Patrick. I really, really want to understand what is it that you do? Because that's part of, part of it. As citizens, we critique everything without realizing what, where, when, how, why. So figuring those things out now before you get in office. I'm not a person who runs for office and says, well, I'm going to do this and I'm going to fix this. What I say is I'm going to dig in and figure out why we're doing it and then tell you why. That's what I want. I want to be able to communicate to you this is why we're doing this. Because I can't make promises I don't know. Right. My promise is to represent you and to ask the questions so that I can tell you why.

Do you think you would be comfortable if you're elected and you take office in January and you have to vote on a budget in 120 days, would you be comfortable to do that?

I would be as long as I can dig in and do all my work now. Yeah, I think starting businesses has helped because I can dissect all those numbers a little bit easier and understand the jargon and all of that. So I would be comfortable. And if I wasn't comfortable, I would keep digging in. Until I was comfortable. That's just my style.

Last question. In the future, when you look back on your time in office, how would you measure your success?

You know, I would measure my success if my kids were proud of me. I am the kind of person I measure success by. If you can look your family in the eye at the end of the day and say, I did the best job I could and I was integrous, I did the right thing, I can sleep at night. That's success to me. So if your kids aren't. If my kids couldn't be proud of me, I didn't do a good job. That's just how I feel.

That is your litmus. Got it.

Natalie, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Do you feel like there's anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?

You know, I always share this because it is my passion. I want voters to get involved. I think as citizens, we forget how much power we have. Our community is full of fantastic leaders, businessmen, you know, entrepreneurs. We have a very, very smart, wonderfully talented community. So get involved because your town needs you. You don't have to be. You don't have to have a title and, you know, be a politician to make change that you can be proud of. So get involved, please. We need you.

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

It's a great conversation. Loved your journey. Thank you for sharing you and I know you online are listening. Enjoy these as well. So if you want to get more of these in your inbox, subscribe to our tribe. We'll get them right to you. And thanks for listening today. Guiding growth conversations with community leaders.

Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast?

This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor it in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us. So I think there's many opportunities at hand. Whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.