Colin Powell School
Tell me about your background. Where are you from?
I am from here. I was born and raised in the Bronx. I’m Puerto Rican and Dominican. My mom was born in PR, my dad in DR. They both came at fairly young ages to the United States. We grew up working class. We never had much but I was always fortunate and blessed to have food, clothing, and all the necessary things while still being able to get quality education at public schools. I attended public schools my whole life in the Bronx. I went to Health Opportunities High School. At that time, I thought I wanted to be in the medical field, either a pediatrician or some type of doctor. I was volunteering and interning by helping elderly people at a nursing home while learning geriatrics skills. I was also on a basketball team in high school for three years.
When I was an upper classman in high school, Bernie Sanders ran for the first time. He inspired me to get into politics. Ever since then I started thinking about the political issues and the injustices he spoke about. What he said made a lot of sense to me, because I also see that there is so much wrong in this country and this world. Ever since then I honestly felt like politics was really what was for me.
What brought you to City College?
It was the campus and the fact that it was not in the Bronx. I wanted to go away for college, or at least go out of the Bronx. I got into SUNY Brockport upstate but did not get enough financial aid and could not afford the $20,000 in tuition, and loans terrified me. I got into the SEEK program at City College and was very fortunate because the program helped me to afford college. The fact that City College is in Manhattan, that the campus is beautiful, I felt like I was in a university upstate but in the city. And I had also heard that City College had a really good medical program and that it has had a lot of student activism historically.
What is your passion or purpose behind pursuing what you did at City College?
It has been an interesting transition. As I made my shift from medicine to politics, I started to dig deeper into the issues and felt I had a moral obligation to get into this field. Once you know something you can’t “unknow” it. I felt like I had to make a change. My passion is in politics. My purpose is to learn the ins and outs of American government, the different theories about how people think about politics, and to really understand what I believe and what I value in society and what I fight for.
I have two minors, Black Studies and Community Change Studies. For Black Studies, I went to Puerto Rico with CUNY Service Corps to do volunteer work during Summer 2019. This was after Hurricane Maria. We were helping families rebuild their roofs, and we were in the wetlands sustaining the ecosystem. That experience was life-changing. As a Puerto Rican, I had never been to Puerto Rico. It was emotional, mental, and physical for me; it was everything, all the above, a holistic experience. I got more in tune with culture and learned more about Afro-Latinidad and Afro-Latinx history. When I came back, I took my first Black Studies course in Afro-Latinx Literature and I really liked it. That’s what made me decide to minor in Black Studies. I became more interested in racial justice issues. I felt like in the Latinx communities a lot of our parents think there is no African descent in their bloodline, so it is incumbent upon us to understand that we all come from similar backgrounds. The ongoing racial injustice in 2020 and before that was very eye-opening.
The Community Change Studies program helped me get a grassroots perspective of everything. Ultimately, I want the work that I do to come from the bottom up, to be organizing at the community level and dealing with community organizations. Minoring in that program helped me get a better sense of that. It also involves an internship that I will start in the spring with Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, which will help me get experience organizing. Then I will be able to bring this grassroots lens to the racial justice and political issues that I deal with in the future. I want to do a grassroots racial justice internship in the future because that is where my heart and passion are. I also want it to be more policy-oriented so I can learn how to be more of an advocate while also being grassroots.
How has City College helped you advance toward your goals?
I have been fortunate to be a part of many programs and opportunities that fell into place with perfect timing, one piggybacking on the other. As a freshman I participated in America Needs You, a two-year professional development program that jump-started my experience. The program offered a lot of workshops on skills for the workplace and a mentor who I am still close with. I did my first internship at my local Assemblymember’s office in the Bronx through Caucus Community Scholars and got introduced to local constituency work. Then I joined the life-changing CUNY Service Corps, as I mentioned. Then I applied to the DC program in the fall of 2019 and interned at a nonprofit in DC. This introduced me to the federal level of government and helped me discover that I like being more grassroots and working behind the scenes.
In the summer of 2020, I got in the Public Policy and International Affairs program (PPIA), because I was thinking of going to graduate school for public policy. I was going to be in California at UC Berkeley for seven weeks, but then COVID shifted everything online. I was sad but it was still memorable and I learned policy analysis, policy research, and quantitative analysis. Now I am involved with two fellowships, the Racial Justice Fellowship at the Colin Powell School and the S Jay Levy fellowship. Both programs are helping me to do internships this summer.
All these opportunities at the Colin Powell School not only built my network, confidence, and abilities but gave me the experience that I needed to move forward and think of what I want to do in my life and career. I am very grateful for these opportunities. I am supposed to graduate in the fall of 2021. After that I want to gain work experience and then go to graduate school.
What special memories or accomplishments from your time at City College would you like to share?
My experience in Puerto Rico was very personal to me; I had never been there. I became more emotionally and culturally inclined to what it feels like to be Puerto Rican. I was there when Governor Rossello resigned. All the protests over there were going on and I was able to be part of two protests in Viejo San Juan. That was very memorable to me, to be there in such a historic moment.
Being part of the DC program was also a very memorable accomplishment. I faced imposter syndrome before applying. Getting accepted and doing the program made me feel that I am capable of accomplishing everything that I want to do. It boosted my confidence.
Do you have any advice you could give to future and current students?
Like I said earlier, I grew up working class. I never had much but I was blessed to have enough. I always felt that I was confident. I just needed the opportunities to reinforce that confidence and my abilities. My main advice to students would be to challenge yourself and be comfortable being uncomfortable. We tend to limit ourselves based on what we can’t do. I think because of where we come from, we don’t have many opportunities as first-generation students, working class students. So when we see an opportunity we may give excuses saying, “but this” or “but that” instead of challenging ourselves. So do not be afraid of going after opportunities. When you are open that is when you really understand what you like and don’t like, what you want and don’t want; it allows you to be more honest and comfortable with yourself and know what your values are and what you want to do. Have the courage to overcome the imposter syndrome that I know we all feel because imposter syndrome is us internalizing the negative aspects of “our backgrounds”. We need to break out from that and be courageous.