Early in my graduate school journey, I remember reading publications from Dr. Sylvia Hurtado at UCLA and Dr. William Perez at Claremont Graduate University. Hoping to one day meet these amazing scholars, I googled “Latino higher education conference” and found the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE). Inspired by the representation of many amazing Latinx scholars, I was determined to attend an AAHHE conference.

I was born in Compton, California, and lived in the Los Angeles area until moving in 1992 due to the unrest surrounding the Rodney King riots. The remainder of my adolescence was spent in Woodburn, Oregon—an agricultural community with a large Latinx immigrant population—where, like many others, I picked berries in the summers with my family. Growing up in a minority-majority community, within both urban and rural/agricultural contexts, set the stage for me to develop a consciousness of the negative physical and psychological impacts that are a consequence of minimal access to education opportunities.

Inspired to contribute to my community, I earned a bachelor’s degree from Portland State University and a master’s degree in counseling from Lewis and Clark College, and I am currently a doctoral student in the Joint Ph.D. Program with San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University. For nearly 15 years, my career in education has focused on college access, particularly working with underrepresented, low-income and first-generation students. My experience includes K-12 school counseling and as a residential counselor working with undocumented youth; college outreach coordinator for TRIO programs; and education policy development at the local and state levels.

As an AAHHE graduate fellow, I was able to meet scholars who looked and talked like me and are contributing to the much-needed work on Latinx in higher education. I am extremely grateful for the support of my AAHHE peers and the faculty, especially my faculty mentor, Dr. Marcela Cuellar, who provided a supportive space to reimage the possibilities for our field and how someone with my background can contribute. AAHHE has been influential in my pursuit of a doctoral degree, from workshops presented by high-caliber scholars to being part of a graduate cohort of doctoral students making a difference locally and nationally.

Through the AAHHE networks and experiences provided, I gained a new perspective on my research, which centers on promoting educational outcomes for students in “new Latinx destinations,” where there has been rapid growth in Latinx populations. I focus on the unique strengths of our communities and students that go unacknowledged through the deficit-minded narratives that are common in education.

In addition to my dissertation research, I have served as a research assistant for the SDSU Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education working with linguistically diverse students in secondary mathematics, and as a research affiliate with the Research & Equity Scholarship Institute working on projects funded by the National Science Foundation. I hope to further my research agenda through a tenure-track faculty position. •