Diana Sánchez
President
Diana Sánchez (she/her/hers) is a first-generation, working-class junior at Duke University double majoring in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History. A David M. Rubenstein scholar, Diana is the daughter of immigrants, mother from Honduras and father from Mexico. She became interested in the root causes of migration at a fairly young age, since she was raised in a rural North Carolina town where many seasonal migrant workers, including her own family, worked picking cabbages, tobacco, and potatoes. Diana has served as Migrant Roots Media’s (MRM) student liaison at Duke University for almost a year. She participated in MRM’s first Duke-sponsored Story+ summer session, where she was able to research the root causes of Honduran-US migration, focusing particularly on the outsourcing of labor and the pillaging of land by US corporations in Honduras. In her free time, Diana enjoys watching Netflix, drawing, and writing.
Victoria “Tori” Pinedo
Vice-President
Victoria “Tori” Pinedo (she/her/hers) is a first-generation, working-class junior at Duke University. She was born and raised in Central Florida by her mother and father who are immigrants from Lima, Peru. Tori grew up in a neighborhood with people from all over Latin America and the Caribbean and holds pride in her Latinx identity. She has dedicated much of her time at Duke to exploring the root causes of migration. The summer after her freshman year, for instance, she participated in a Duke-sponsored engagement project in Tucson, Arizona where she worked with the non-profit Coalición De Derechos Humanos and organized against the human rights violations that migrants face in the Sonoran desert and at the border. Tori is also a Mellon Mays Fellow and has spent the last summer researching the functions of borders and how people work to dismantle them. In her free time, Tori loves running and watching Netflix and hopes to pick up roller skating as a new hobby.
Arlene Arévalo
Editorial Fellow
Arlene Arévalo (she/her/hers) is a first-generation, working-class senior majoring in Comparative Literature at Duke University. Arlene loves situating the work she reads, which typically falls under the Western canon, alongside works centered on postcolonialism, queerness, and embodiment theory, ultimately pushing for the importance of a decolonial aesthetics and epistemology. For Arlene, studying at a predominantly white institution raises questions of identity, diaspora, and personhood – questions she hopes to explore further within herself and with others during her time at Migrant Roots Media. Outside of reading and writing, she enjoys cooking and watching reality TV shows like 90 Day Fiancé.