WHO Am I?

Before the idea of curating my life passion into this page, I was always taking little bits of my life to safe keep. Hoarding random knickknacks like bottle caps to the most random tiny things I could stash in my pocket, scrapbooking my life experiences along with all the emotions they brought and left me with. Now I get to share with a few others!

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I have called myself many different identities Mexican, Mexican-American, Latin, Mestizo/a, Chicano/a. My family immigrated across two countries from Michoacán/San Luis Potosí (Mexico) to  Pilsen (Chicago, IL) then to Gage Park and finally to the forest preserve suburbs in Cook County. I often looked at our roots here and there, de aquí y de allá, how separated we've become from our native plants yet manage to create our own Latin dystopia at home within what people would call a stereotypical White-America neighborhood. The ability to figuratively and quite literally grow your home around you is an amazing skill to learn. It's innate in some, a choice by others, and a privilege to live with. My environmental passion has always been innate as I've been privileged to be connected to nature all my life. My higher education led me to New York to achieve a Bachelor of Science in Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation & a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies, another Minor in Conservation (due to my college limiting the amount of conservation classes I could take within a single major), work as coordinator of the community garden my college was able to co-create, and later obtain a Geographic Information Systems Specialization Certificate after graduating. One thing my undergrad professors left with me, that I hope to spread to others and carry into my current work in Chicago, is having a vulnerable holistic viewpoint of life in that we're all part of the earth no matter how much we try to differentiate ourselves from non-human animals/animals to sentient/non-sentient entities. We are all what nature encompasses, as without us there wouldn't be destruction nor the new foliage that arise from it. Present day my career is connecting the conservation field with communities in a little place on earth, some call "Urbs in Horto/The City in a Garden".