Dear Neighbor, 

When life has taken me to unexpected places, I’ve always leaned on what I learned from my parents: the value of hard work and the importance of standing up for people who are different. As I run to be your next State Representative, I want to share with you the principles that guide me and the journey that has shaped who I am today.

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After high school, I couldn’t afford college without taking on substantial debt. Growing up in a family that often struggled to pay utility bills and afford food, I wasn’t willing to take on such debt. Instead, I worked in multiple part-time retail jobs more than 60 hours a week for minimum wage with no benefits. I felt how hard it was to pay the bills, and I saw that the lack of a degree kept me from reaching the jobs I dreamed of. Despite these challenges, I showed up every day and performed my responsibilities with a smile, having faith that things would turn around.

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But after three exhausting years in retail, I was struggling to see a future for myself as the days went by. I knew I needed to create a change for myself. So, I decided to join the United States Navy for a sense of purpose and to do something meaningful with my life in service to this country. I enlisted as a Fire Control Technician and served on a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine for six years. Once again, I worked hard and did my job well. I studied the ins and outs of the ship, practiced emergency response, stood guard duty from the middle of the night to the busiest times of day, and was well trained in the operation and maintenance of the combat system.

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During my service, I also gained the confidence to be true to myself and take steps to live my life more authentically, as a woman. However, within a matter of months, a discriminatory ban was announced to prohibit transgender people from serving in the military. It didn’t sit well with me that people’s rights could so arbitrarily be passed back and forth by politicians without consideration for the lived realities of servicemembers. In fact, having already excelled in my position and proving my dedication and efficiency, it was outright insulting to my commitment and abilities to perform my duty to this country. So, once my service was completed honorably in 2019, I decided to dedicate myself to doing all I can to protect the rights of others from being taken away and improving the quality of life for our community.

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It was in the Navy where I met my partner, and after our service was complete, we decided to be together. He is the most supportive and loving person I know. After serving our country through multiple deployments, we bought a house in the Knightsville neighborhood of Cranston, a place that reminds me so much of the close-knit community of Ansonia where I grew up. It’s a neighborhood filled with hardworking families and supportive neighbors, where everyone looks out for each other. For us, things were finally good: we have stable jobs, great neighbors, and a fenced backyard for our two rescue dogs, Sam and Leia, to run around and play.​

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Throughout the time I have lived in Cranston, I have actively engaged with the community and regularly organized with neighbors, finding joy and purpose in making a difference together. We got the city to invest in green energy, helped establish a permanent diversity commission, elected local champions to fight for affordable housing and public education, defended reproductive rights, and pushed back against the NRA to win common sense gun safety measures at the State House. And I joined allies from across the state to protect our LGBTQ+ community.

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In 2023, I graduated from URI with a degree in sociology and political science—the first in my family to earn a college degree. Getting the opportunity to go to college was a long process that I would not get to pursue until I was in my 30s. My family had always encouraged me to get an education, and now that I could finally pursue it, it would have meant the world to have my parents there with me to watch their child walk across the stage with a diploma, an opportunity they did not have nor their own parents. But unfortunately, they passed away before that moment and it was a crushing realization that I was really on my own. My hard work and success in school paid off, as I was then accepted into a graduate program for sociology at UMass Boston, where I currently teach my own class as a teaching fellow and am part of the graduate student union. My parents always knew I would do well in anything I put my mind to, and that I would never give up no matter how tough things were.