About Me

I am an award-winning content creator, artist, researcher and educator. 

I was born and raised in the Salinas Valley of California. My parents, Mexican immigrants from Jalisco and Sinaloa, worked as farm labor in the fertile land surrounding our semi-rural home. Throughout my formative years, they inculcated in me and my younger sister the value of education in striving for social justice. My parents also helped cultivate my early interest in languages and the visual arts. It is these lifelong lessons and affinities that continue to inform my practice as an educator, artist, and researcher.

As a learning scientist, I use ethnographic, video, data analytics, and multimodal research methods to investigate the role of social networks, television, and other digital new media in the learning and transformation of non-dominant populations. Currently, my work examines the collaborative practices of novice teachers and adolescents at the intersection of virtual and in-person terrains.

As a public pedagogy and new media scholar, I design and implement high-impact strategies and campaigns that robustly leverage social media. This work has earned me two consecutive Webby Awards!

I am also an award-winning designer and instructor of hybrid/blended (online/in-person) and online undergraduate education courses. I hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction from the California College of the Arts, a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University, and received my PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

I often collaborate with my partner in life and love Arturo Cortez and our pet Chihuahua Xóchitl (aka RuPawl). We are fans of drag culture and collectors of Chicanx and Latinx art.
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