HELLO/ ALLÍ POONJA/ HOLA

Cuenca, Ecuador. Born in the military hospital on ‘La Huaynacapac’ (street name) 26, August 1987. By 1996 however, I spoke english and decided I liked that song by The Fugees and Tupac- my childhood in Washington Heights, NY marked different cultures into me.

Immigrant. Indigenous. First born. Mestiza. With a perpetual difficulty in telling time.

My mother, her parents and younger brothers, raised us. My grandfather, an Indigenous man from Cañar was my Papá, our Elder, and my grandmother - a light skinned mestiza woman, who stopped wearing the traditional skirts and heard of the US for the first time in 1969. Raised within the safety of a matriarch and patriarch, I dutifully followed our holy grail: get good grades. study hard.

Broken Kichwa (our native language). Pizza. Mormon. Harlem. Community. And Soup, even in summer.

When I was 12 I began playing squash, and at 15 I got a full scholarship to an elite east coast boarding school. The best preparation I could have asked for in relation to the work I do today in the world.

Now 37 - the M.A in Political Science, or the abandoned post bacc at Harvard, or the financial sector experience might be of more import - but maybe what is a little more telling about me is this:

I believe this life is sacred, and the next fifty years will be for creating new timelines for our descendants- to enact new narratives, different economic systems and above all a palpable equanimity seeded into these lands.