This fall, I served as a Policy and Research Fellow at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) National Office, the largest and oldest Latino civil rights organization in the United States, founded in 1929. LULAC’s legacy of advocating for educational equity, civic engagement, and political inclusion feels especially present in Washington, D.C., where policy is not theoretical; it is lived, negotiated, and contested daily.
During my residency at the UC Washington Center, where I lived and studied just ten minutes from the White House, policy stopped feeling abstract. From interviewing Native Washingtonians whose roots stretch from California to D.C., to witnessing how dreams, data, and lived experience intersect in real time, this fellowship sharpened my understanding of what policy touches and what it often overlooks.
Growing up, I learned La Tortuga y la Liebre as a story I learned to carry long before I learned to cite. A reminder that speed isn’t the same as progress, and that consistency often outlasts spectacle.
That story followed me here.
Self-doubt creeps in quietly, fast like the conejo, uninvited, especially when you’re stepping into spaces that weren’t built with you in mind. But doubt doesn’t decide who gets to stay. Tenacity became tenancy; the right to stay.
Like the tortuga, it moves slowly, deliberately, and with purpose. It pays rent. It remains. As a linguistics student, that idea clicked when I noticed how close residency and resiliency are — not just in meaning, but in sound. The /t/ in residency and the /l/ in resiliency are both alveolar, produced at the same point in the mouth. Different functions. Same grounding. Same staying power.
That grounding showed up clearly when I moderated a full-women/mujeres panel alongside fellow UC students. My role wasn’t just to hold space, but to make space, for pauses, for stories, for healing. Real talk wasn't treated as side notes or afterthoughts; they were the structure. The subject. The sentence itself.
Coming from California to Washington, D.C., this fellowship marked a shift in scope, not in purpose nor values. In C.A., my understanding of justice is rooted in community and lived experience. In D.C., I learned how those same truths move through policy, research, and federal process. The distance between the two isn’t geography, it’s autobiography.
Sometimes power shows up rooted.Tortuga pace.Residency energy.Resiliency in motion.Aquí ’stoy.