My parents came to the US in 1995, and two years later I was born. My first zip code was housed in South Central, Los Angeles, not the kindest of cities. From gang violence to poverty, and tons of crime, it isn’t a city for a child to grow up. Thankfully it didn’t take long for us to move, and three years later we ended up in a couple different zip codes and ended up in Pomona. My Y story begins in Pomona, with my parents taking me to the Pomona YMCA to get me swim lessons. I eventually joined the Jr. Lakers, joined swim teams, and never wanted to leave the YMCA. To me the Y was a big part of my childhood. In 2005, my sister was born and months later we found ourselves in Avondale, AZ. It was our first big move and sadly a Y wasn’t in the area at the time until the South West YMCA opened up and my family moved to Goodyear, where I spent the next ten years of my life at, the longest time I ever was able to call a zip code mine. My high school experience is when my nonprofit passion began with a ton of volunteer work with local nonprofits and charities. High school for me was a time of discovery as I had no idea what I wanted to do, and after graduating in 2015 from Desert Edge with a 3.85 GPA, honors, and a full ride to Arizona State University, I was as lost as ever of what the future had in store for me.
I majored at ASU with a Bachelor of Science in Nonprofit Leadership & Management and on May 9th I graduated with cum laude, 3.56 GPA, and was a certified nonprofit professional ready to change the world. But that wasn’t the case a few months prior where my Y journey truly began. November 2018 I was told my final semester was to be a senior internship, and I scrambled through the hundred business cards and LinkedIn connections I had to find something.
But then the lightbulb lit up and I remembered the impact the Y had on my childhood and figured it was my time to give back. I reached out to the Chandler Y to see if they could squeeze me in for a three-month internship and began my career as a Sports Coordinator. I did the YMCA Leadership Academy, a program founded by the Valley of the Sun YMCA to train graduating seniors in the nonprofit sector to be the best Y professional they can be through hands on training, in branch experience, and top-level leadership taught classes. While the internship was by far one of the toughest experiences I faced, I saw it to the end, graduated both ASU and YLA, and can proudly say I am the Sports Director of the Chandler YMCA, ready to impact my community and give the youth the same opportunities the YMCA gave to me almost 20 years ago.