Discuss your general career path since graduating from UT.
Upon graduating from UT in December, I began as a reporting fellow with the Texas Observer and covered human rights and immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 1, I began as a Report for America corps member, working with the Associated Press in Austin, TX. My areas of focus include Texas politics, the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, the 2020 election, voting, crime, racial injustice, and minority communities.
How did your BDP experience influence your career path and interests?
I recently received my BDP certificate in Human Rights & Social Justice combined with a degree in journalism. Throughout the beginning of my writing career, I was not sure what kinds of stories I wanted to tell. However, due to the experiences I witnessed in my small, minority community, I desired to learn more about the history and laws that affected issues like immigration, civil rights, and human rights. So, it was my BDP classes that informed the path to the stories I would end up telling.
What do you value most about your BDP experience?
Coming from a small town in Texas with a majority-minority community, I knew little about the rest of the world and the issues outside of my small bubble. The classes that I took through BDP on human rights and social justice broadened my horizons and allowed me to know and understand a diverse array of communities and peoples and their struggles. This gave me a deeper sense of purpose, a desire to explore and listen, and a better idea of the difference I wanted to make through storytelling.
In what ways did an interdisciplinary education prepare you for what you are currently doing?
The niche knowledge about migration patterns, national and international law and policy, global organizations and economics, and human rights through history has allowed me to develop an expertise in my field of writing that would have otherwise taken years to create. It has also allowed me to relate to people from across the globe, of different levels of power and at different socioeconomic levels, and meet them with cultural competence. These lessons inform my stories daily.