“I am grateful to work alongside community organizations, mentors, and workers in the ongoing struggle for dignity and justice.”
Transparent counts with conservative rounding. Updated 2026.
Grant total reflects full award amounts for projects I contributed to and does not represent personal earnings.
I am a PhD student in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I study how worker centers and community organizations help immigrant, low-wage, and undocumented workers build voice, leadership, and collective power—especially when traditional union protections are out of reach. Drawing on oral history, ethnography, and the Power Resource Approach, I look closely at how grassroots organizations create spaces of dignity and democratic participation within unequal labor systems.
This work is personal to me. I come from a working-class Mexican and Salvadoran family in Humboldt Park, Chicago, where I saw how hard people worked and how often their knowledge went unrecognized. Years of fieldwork—from documenting Black resistance in the Mississippi Delta to collaborating with Indigenous communities through the Doris Duke Oral History Project—have deepened that commitment. I approach labor scholarship as a form of listening: grounded in collective memory, accountable to the people who share their stories, and connected to struggles for dignity and justice.
One organized record of upcoming presentations, research training, and community-engaged work. Scroll each rail horizontally; every item keeps the date, place, status, and role explicit.
Accepted appearances and current leadership
I’m co-organizing this Cornell Migrations Program conference with Vicente Celestino Mata Jr. We invite abstracts from Cornell students, faculty, and members of the local community on migration, borders, labor, inequality, and changing environments.
Atkinson Hall · 350 Tower Road · Ithaca, New York
“Making the Impossible, Possible”: Coalitional Movement Infrastructures and the Fight for the NY Excluded Worker Fund.
121st Annual Meeting →
“From Crisis to Care: Community Interviews on Worker Centers and Collective Power.”
2026 Annual Meeting →Drag, swipe, use Shift + mouse wheel, or choose the arrows.
Completed work, newest to oldest
Selected with scholarship support for an intensive graduate institute on racial politics, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and institutional power.
Connected racial formation and migration politics to institutions organizing labor, citizenship, and democratic participation.
I presented “Is Ithaca Still a Union Town?” at the Labor and Employment Relations Association Annual Meeting.
The research examines worker power, local labor repertoires, and uneven regeneration in Tompkins County from 1984 to 2026.
I presented “Field Generated Power Resources in Decentralized Labor Ecosystems” at the Global Labor and Work Department’s Graduate Student Symposium.
The presentation examined how worker centers and community organizations generate power beyond the conventional union workplace.
I participated in a community safety patrol supporting immigrant neighbors alongside Indivisible, No Más Lágrimas, Ana Ortiz, and local partners.
My role was supportive: helping maintain a safer public space while community leaders and families made their own demands visible.
The summer school treated ethnography as the disciplined construction of evidence rather than neutral data collection.
We worked through interviewing, interaction analysis, memoing, evidentiary warrants, deviant cases, epistemological vigilance, and non-extractive ethics.
I joined a cross-disciplinary cohort examining migration through geography, history, law, public health, and policy.
The program sharpened how I connect migrant labor and displacement to urban governance, borders, and institutional exclusion.
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My thesis research follows how workers and community organizations in Tompkins County built collective capacity beyond the traditional union hall. The Working Press and The Workers’ Edge show how those groups explained workplace struggles, connected campaigns, and created a public language of solidarity.
The question guiding this work: What kinds of power become possible when workers build their own institutions, media, relationships, and memory?
Open the searchable Working Press archive Explore the research and public archiveSelected fellowships and awards supporting doctoral research, migration scholarship, and continued participation in academic communities.
Cornell ILR research support for the current doctoral program.
Migrations Program · Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Graduate fellowship support for academic development.
Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program scholar and research community member.
Selected recognition only. The full curriculum vitae includes additional scholarships, travel grants, certificates, and community-engagement awards.
