A little backstory

Growing up in a privileged context in Colombia I was somehow shielded. Being part of the upper social class, I never felt that any part of my identity could represent a disadvantage for me.

In this book I want to tell you the story of what I have learned this last two years and how it has shaped my identity. I’ll explain why I believe that only by engaging in difficult conversations, by embracing not only the sameness but also the difference, by understanding the biography of our identity, is that we’ll have higher capacity to participate in creating the good, awesome, inclusive society that we all want.

It’s scary for me to tell this story, because I’m showing parts of my past self that I’m not proud of. My most dreaded fear is that you would think I am a spoiled, naive person, because I’ve actually considered this issues very carefully. But it is what it is, and this is the story that makes me who I am today.

It all starts a few years ago in Bogota. Back then, I didn’t experienced a lot of tension regarding my identity or believes. As I mentioned before, in Colombia I’m part of the upper social class, and that gave me protection. To give you some context, Colombia is a highly stratified country, and the characteristic that divide us the most is social class. We grow up separated and there is a lot laksj of friction between classes.

The only part of my identity that I was always fighting and rejecting was the fact of being a Latina. No one in Colombia ever called me Latina, because we’re all the same in that way. You know, in my mind the word Latino was equal to illegal immigrant.

I had the dream of coming to study to the US, and I believed that because some people, Latinos, were coming to the States doing things “the wrong way”, it was harder for me to come here, I had more barriers, even though I was doing things “the right way”. I hated when I got to the airport, or to any store in the US, and people just by looking at me, talked to me in spanish. Believe me, I hated it, I didn’t want to look Latino or to be classified as part of that community.

For the rest of it, I was very comfortable, my life was pretty easy. I lived in a world full of sameness, where the people around me went to the same high schools and the same universities, and we used those attributes to classify people and connect with others.

The only time I felt the tension and how this division could be harmful for all of us, was when I started working in MercadoLibre with many people from different social classes. At the beginning it 3

was very uncomfortable, there was a lot of prejudice and stereotyping in both directions, but the easy thing was to ignore it, never talk about it, we just continued working.

We never got to have conversations around this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I didn’t know all the problems that my country faced, it’s just that it was very easy to ignore them and just keep living my life not harming anyone, the one I knew very well.

So, in 2018 I fulfill my dream of coming to study to the US. The idea of moving to New York City was exciting. I was coming to my favorite city in the world to study in on of the best design schools in the world. My expectations were so high, it was definitely my dream come true. Until it wasn’t.

Turns out, I didn’t have the safety net that my privilege gave me anymore. I was no longer part of the upper social class, so I couldn’t keep classifying people that way.

This was the first time that I realized many people saw me as a person of color, the first time I felt part of a minority. This was the first time that I felt that being a woman could potentially represent a disadvantage for me. And, I couldn’t keep rejecting being a Latina anymore, of course I couldn’t. I was a mess, I felt anxious alk 4 most of the time, I had a desperate need to go back home, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I felt like that for almost a year.

But, NYC has a certain magic, and with all its diversity, it pushed me towards new opportunities. Last summer I went back home and I discovered something inside me was changing. I was embracing the sameness and the difference for the first time. Dancing with this polarity has been one of the most amazing things I’ve discovered this last years.

On one hand, being away from home connects you with things you didn’t know you cherished, so being in NYC helped me acknowledge the part of my identity that I didn’t recognized before, my Latino roots. And on the other-hand, I had the opportunity to start knowing and learning from people with all kinds of combinations in terms of identity. I was learning through experience about other people struggles, and for the first time I was really listening.

It hasn’t been easy, it isn’t pretty, it is very tough, but what has been happening this last year feels right...it feels awesome! Looking back, I can’t believe how much I’ve changed. What this process has taught me is that, some days it’ll be easier, most of the days it’ll be a lot of work, but it’s always - ALWAYS - worth it.

A very important part of this journey was participating in the experimental prototype sections of the Independent Project: Design Research and Integrative Studio 2 classes: Design Principles and Practices for Developmental Action Learning.

With a developmental approach, our studio classes were not only based on the Strategic Design methodology, but also on theories, principles and practices drawn from transformative pedagogy, adaptive leadership, action science, learning organizations, and deliberately developmental organizations.

Looking back, I can’t believe how amazing working on this project has been. It was, nevertheless, very uncertain, challenging and uncomfortable. That’s what you get when you really dare.

When I first came to this class, I had no idea what I wanted my thesis project to be about. Lisa Norton, our incredible professor, encouraged us to follow our heart, to work on something that we really cared about. That, in combination with the developmental approach, made each project in this class a unique showcase of meaning, courage and heart.

Back in August 2019, when Lisa invited us to dream big, I decided I need to do a little sense making of that first moment when I felt sdf difference, when I was sharing time and space with people from other social classes back in Colombia.

Now you’ll see what happened after that initial inquiry.