Q: Tell me a little about your background.
A: My family is from Barbados, and I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, in a very Caribbean neighborhood — actually a mix of African American and Caribbean. I went to private elementary and junior high school that was very Caribbean and very strict. And then I went to public high school, which I was really ready for by that time — James Madison High School — a wonderful high school, extremely diverse.
Q: What made you decide to choose Vassar?
A: Actually, the funny thing is that the viewbook was also definitely a factor. I had stacks of those viewbooks from different colleges, and all of them had students pictured on the cover — except Vassar. Vassar just had this white cover and the word “Be.” I thought, hmmm, that’s interesting. They don’t have students on the front of their book! You have to look inside to see what they’re all about. So I just think it’s really ironic that I’m now being interviewed to be in the viewbook!
Q: Did you come in with an idea about what you wanted to do at Vassar?
A: I knew that I wanted to study abroad; I knew that I wanted to major in English, and I knew that I wanted to go to law school. I had the choice of going to universities, where the academic curriculum was more career focused, but Vassar really appealed to me because it seemed like I could get a lot more out of my education by going to a small school where I could really get to know some of my professors.
Q: Where did you study abroad?
A: I originally wanted to study abroad in two places: Mexico and England. I ultimately studied in England but changed my plans for Mexico. I read about this amazing program in Cuba through the School for International Training. I wasn’t too keen on going to Cuba at first because it was Cuba! At that time I thought, well, this is a little daring, and I don’t think I’m this daring. But the program itself and the curriculum, which focused on bettering U.S.-Cuban relations, were just so amazing that I thought, oh, what the heck! Why not? So I applied and got into that program. My mom wasn’t so crazy about Cuba, but she was very excited about England. I really wanted to study literature, so I ended up going to Oxford to study literature, and I got a scholarship to go there as well.
Q: So you spent first semester junior year in Cuba, and second semester in Oxford? Wow! That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?
A: Yes, I did both, and it was a great experience — two totally different experiences. One thing that Vassar taught me was to set my own path, and it also gave me the confidence to do that. I may not have thought that way if I had gone to a larger university.
Q: Tell me about Cuba.
A: I was a little scared. Before traveling to Cuba, I assumed that Cubans would be dismissive to Americans in general and that I was going to stick out like a sore thumb. To my surprise, I was wrong on both points. Cubans were very nice. The first thing a lot of Cubans wanted to know was what it was like to experience 9/11. They were very sad and empathetic about it. In particular, they wanted to know because they don’t get a lot of media coverage from outside of Cuba. And secondly, I didn’t stick out like a sore thumb; there were so many Afro-Cubans that there were moments when people didn’t believe that I was American. At one point, we [the student group] were going into a hotel in Santiago, and I was so busy looking at the architecture that I didn’t see the rest of the group go in. Cuban citizens aren’t allowed in tourist places, and when I tried to follow the group into the hotel, they didn’t want to let me in because they thought I was Cuban. It was pretty funny, actually.
Q: And at the end of the semester you went directly to England?
A: I went home for a week and a half, and then I went to England, and it was very different.
Oxford has a tutorial system where you work one-on-one with a tutor. So I took tutorials in the history of the English language and women in literature. It was just great. And once again, there I was with my Vassar mentality, and I thought, hmmm, I’m going to do my own thing---I’m going to put on a play! So even though I was a visiting student, I wrote a play, took it to the study abroad coordinator, and said, “Is there a theater here where I can put on a play?” So I put on a play there. The play was titled “Linked,” and it was about the global impact of HIV. I recruited British students to act in the play, and I directed it.
Q: Had you ever directed a play before?
A: No! That was the funny part! I had never written a play, I had never directed a play, and I’d never been in a play. That was very much the Vassar influence. They were a little taken aback because I was just a visiting student, but the theater was right there, so it was also easy to do.
Q: What was Oxford like?
A: I loved Oxford — it’s an amazing university. But there, too, I had my preconceptions. I went in thinking that everyone was going to walk around wearing a red robe and was going to have a little dog and a cigar and a fireplace. One funny thing, though, was that I felt more anti-American sentiment in England than I did in Cuba. It was at the beginning of the Iraq war, and there was a lot of opposition to it. So it was a very interesting year. I went abroad thinking that I was going to learn about Spanish language and English literature, but what I really learned about was the impact of U.S. foreign policy.
Q: And then senior year, you won a Compton Mentor Fellowship. Tell me about that.
A: The Compton fellowship is a $35,000 grant awarded to eight graduating seniors from across the U.S. who are interested in doing projects in one of three areas — family planning, the environment, or peace and security. I chose family planning, and the project I proposed was to lead a series of seminars in sex education for young girls in the Dominican Republic over the course of a year. I was very interested in going to the Caribbean since my family is Caribbean. I’d never been to the Dominican Republic. I never even knew a Dominican as a close friend or anything like that. I choose the Dominican Republic because there is a great need for such a program and I knew that the $35,000 grant would go a long way there. According to the United Nations, HIV is the number one killer of adolescent girls in the Dominican Republic. There’s a high teen pregnancy rate, a high STD rate, and a lack of programs and resources for young girls.
So I went to the Dominican Republic. You’re supposed to work with a mentor who helps you implement your project, but there was a scheduling conflict with my original mentor and it didn’t work out, so I found another mentor who was amazing. She was from World Vision, and her background was actually more suited to the project than my original mentor. She suggested that I work through the church in La Alta Gracia, which is one of the poorest sections of Santo Domingo. So I went to the church, and they were so nice. They said I could hold an information session there and they would spread the word. A lot of young girls and their parents came, and then I needed to find a place to hold the actual seminar. The World Vision headquarters was 45 minutes away from the barrio, and there was no way that the mothers were going to let their 10-year-old girls travel that far. So I ended up having to rent a three-bedroom apartment just to hold the seminars in. Actually it was perfect because it was sort of independent, and it was a space where the girls began to feel comfortable. And that was beginning of what is now Proyecto LIDER. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but the Compton project evolved into a nonprofit which is going strong.
Q: Wow — how did that happen?
A: The first meeting, about five girls came, and during that first meeting I asked them, “Who are you? What do you want to do with your life?” And they all answered, “I want to be a housewife and I want to have five kids.” And not only did they want to have five kids, they said they wanted to have “a nice looking husband” so their kids would be lighter than they were. I was a little shocked, and thought, well, I have a little bit more cut out for me than I anticipated!
They didn’t quite know what to make of me that first meeting. Who was I? I was a Vassar graduate and a foreigner, and I spoke with this big thick American accent. Sure, I looked just like them, but there was clearly a wall. The wall came down in kind of an unexpected way. The next week, I was trying to lead a seminar on self esteem, and there was a new girl whose name was Rosana, and I could tell as soon as she came in that she was going to be like Dennis the Menace. And all of the sudden, a car went by outside with music blasting, and Rosana got up and started dancing and shouting, and then they all got up and started dancing and shouting. And I’m there trying to get them all to sit back down and pay attention. But I didn’t really yell at them, which is maybe what they were expecting, and it was just really weird because after that, they just got really comfortable with me. From then on, there was a lot of chitter chatter, and the room was no longer quiet, but the five girls slowly grew into 20 because they told their sisters and their friends.
After a while, I started implementing different recreational activities because I realized that you can’t have teen girls sitting quietly every single day talking about serious topics. So I would bring in arts and crafts, just to change the schedule a bit. And to make a long story short, I called the program Proyecto LIDER, which stands for leadership, identity, development, education, and realization. And we now focus not only on reproductive health but also the arts and technology.
I contacted the fellowship program that sent me to Oxford and asked if there were any scholars in the Dominican Republic, and through them, I connected with Felicia Montgomery, who is now a board member on Proyecto LIDER. We work together every day on the program. I went back last summer and installed a new program office, and one of the older girls, who is 19, is now the interim program director. We’re looking for staff members and volunteers. So we are still running! I plan to be involved in it forever. I want to make this a lifetime commitment.
Q: Do you see outcomes from the program?
A: Remember the five girls that I started with on the first day who said that they wanted to be housewives and have five kids? Before I left the Dominican Republic at the end of the Compton, I asked them, “Okay, what do you want to do?” And they answered things like, “I want to be a doctor, I want to be an engineer.” And I said, “Wait a minute — don’t you want to be housewives?” And they all just looked at me. They were all offended. They had come so far that they had actually forgotten that they once held that notion. And I said, “Well, don’t you remember? That’s what you told me!” And they said in a very business-like way, “Oh yeah, we did say that! Well, we’ve learned!”
Q: Tell me about law school.
A: I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gone to Vassar and if I hadn’t done the Compton Mentor Fellowship because it’s very easy to get swept up into the frenzy. Law school has been an amazing experience because I came in having a good idea of what I want to do.
Q: Why UCLA?
A: UCLA is one of the younger law schools, and I think that factors in to how innovative and daring it is in terms of its programs and curricula. For example, there’s the Business Law and Policy Program and the Critical Race Studies Program — no other top law school has the latter program. So there is a lot of variety. And the professors here are amazing. It’s a small law school, and it reminds me a lot of Vassar in the way that I can sit down and have coffee with a professor. Also, I visited UCLA one summer when I was working for the National Urban League, and I remember thinking to myself: this is a public school?! This is a sprawling, beautiful, well-endowed campus, and if ever I get in here, I’m going.
Q: What is your five-year plan?
A: My short term goal will be to try to pay off my loans, and I don’t know how that is going to work out. But I would like to just concentrate on working for Proyecto LIDER, and long term, I’d like to expand Proyecto LIDER into a very well-known nonprofit, with headquarters in the U.S.
