about me

“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.”

C. Wright Mills

Since a young age, I have been interested in better understanding the intersections of social systems. My initial motivation was to better understand social injustices and inequities in my home country, Peru, and other countries in the Global South. My lived experience as an immigrant further shaped my desire to better understand social systems, which led me to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in social sciences.

Through my work experience in various roles, such as researcher, social worker, program specialist, and analyst, I have gained a broader and more profound understanding of different systems and their interactions. Having worked for various organizations, such as non-profit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions, I am aware that well-intentioned but poorly implemented interventions may prove ineffective in solving social problems. I believe that developing adequate indicators is essential to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions. My experience has also taught me that it is essential to present findings through storytelling to help one's audience understand situations, develop solutions, and provoke questions.

Getting a bear hug from UC Berkeley's mascot, Oski the Bear, before my M.S.W. commencement (May, 2016).

I decided to create this personal website, Tableaudor, with the goal of sharing some of my dashboard samples created on Tableau, and to challenge myself to continue exploring, researching, analyzing, writing, publishing, and improving my skills in data analytics and other relevant skills. I truly believe in data analytics as a tool for measuring and eventually improving performance of social programs and agencies, and ultimately conditions in communities and society. However, I also believe that data analytics and visualization are only some of the means available to us in order to accomplish these goals, but by no means the only ones, as these tools alone cannot solve social problems, and there should always be room for creativity, innovation, and grassroots efforts in order to tackle the numerous social problems affecting communities.

Some of my accomplishments include:

As a recipient of the USAID Research & Innovation Global Development Fellowship, I designed a peacebuilding program for an arts-based CBO in Colombia.
As a researcher I oversaw data collection and analysis of a parenting education program. This research led to an academic article's publication.
As a Program Assistant, I developed a Spanish course for brain injury survivors and carried out outreach to reach the Latinx community.
I started percussion courses for different populations, including children of migrant families and adults with developmental challenges.
M.A. thesis on racism in the Peruvian media was awarded as the best M.A. thesis in my program. This research led to the publication of a chapter in the book, Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern African Diaspora.

I am also a music and sports aficionado. As a musician, I have played with different bands in the Bay Area, Santa Barbara, and Colombia and have developed percussion classes. As a sports fan, I enjoy exploring the intersection of statistics and sports.