My father left Santo Domingo with nothing but the belief that his children deserved more than poverty had given him. He dropped out of school in the sixth grade to care for his sick mother, immigrated to a country where he knew no one, and built a life in the Bronx as a superintendent. My mother works two jobs to keep us housed. Neither of them ever went to college. I am the first. That history is not background. It is purpose. I have watched my family navigate housing insecurity, language barriers, and legal systems that were never designed to protect people like us. When we nearly lost our apartment because of a landlord who exploited a technicality in my mother's Section 8 payments, I felt the absence of someone who knew how to fight back. I decided to become that person. I am now a rising junior at Fordham University double-majoring in Political Science and International Studies on a pre-law track, carrying a 3.632 GPA. This summer I was selected as one of five Hope Reichbach Fund Fellows at Brooklyn Defender Services, working alongside public defenders in criminal, immigration, and family defense practice. Every client I sit across from reminds me why I am here. My goal is to become a public defender in the Bronx and eventually a policymaker who addresses the conditions that bring people into courtrooms in the first place. My father's sacrifice made my education possible. My community's need made my purpose clear.

Empathy is not a soft skill. It is a political act. It is the decision to see someone fully, to understand where they come from and what they carry, before you decide how to respond to them. I learned this not in a classroom but in the spaces where I grew up: the Bronx, where my Dominican immigrant family navigated housing insecurity, language barriers, and a legal system that rarely extended them the dignity they deserved. That upbringing did not just shape my values. It gave me a set of skills that I believe are essential to building the kind of global community this scholarship envisions. The most powerful of those skills is language. I move between English and Spanish not just grammatically but culturally, code-switching in ways that signal to people that I see them, that I am not an outsider speaking at them but someone who understands something about where they come from. At Lincoln Square Legal Services, that ability has been concrete and consequential. When a client walks in overwhelmed, sometimes frightened, and I can meet them in their own language, the dynamic shifts immediately. Trust is established faster. Information flows more freely. People feel less alone in a system that has historically made them invisible. Language is not just communication. It is recognition. I am also developing conversational proficiency in Italian, because I believe that every language you learn is another way of understanding how a different community sees the world. My double major in Political Science and International Studies has deepened this instinct into an analytical framework. I have studied how borders are drawn, how power moves across them, and how the communities most affected by global decisions are most often excluded from the conversations that produce them. That academic foundation sits alongside my practical experience at Brooklyn Defender Services, where I work with clients navigating criminal charges, immigration holds, and family proceedings simultaneously. These are not separate crises. They are the local consequences of global systems, and understanding that connection is what allows me to advocate with any real effectiveness. Being a gay, Afro-Latino, first-generation college student means I have always existed at intersections that the world tends to flatten into a single story. I know what it feels like to be reduced, to have someone assume they already understand you before you have spoken. That experience has made me a more careful listener and a more intentional communicator, and it has shaped how I show up for every community I serve. I carry it into every space I enter, from a courtroom to a canvassing table to a panel at Fordham Law School, where I returned to Defying Legal Gravity as an alumni panelist to model for the next generation of students what it looks like to take up space without apology. A more empathetic global community is not built through grand gestures. It is built through the accumulation of moments where someone decided to listen first, to ask rather than assume, and to fight for people whose names they will never see in the news. That is the work I am committed to, and this scholarship would help ensure I have the resources to keep doing it at the level it deserves.

Higher education is not a luxury for me. It is the mechanism through which everything I am working toward becomes possible. Growing up in the Bronx as the child of Dominican immigrants, raised by a mother who works two jobs to keep a roof over our heads, I learned early that the systems meant to protect families like mine often fail them instead. When we nearly lost our apartment, I did not just feel the fear of displacement. I felt the absence of someone who knew how to fight back. Growing up queer in a community where that identity is not always welcomed added another layer to that feeling, the sense of navigating a world that was not fully built for you, and learning to move through it anyway. I want to be that person who fights back. For my family, for my community, and for everyone who has ever felt like the system was not built with them in mind. I am a gay, Afro-Latino, first-generation college student from the Bronx, the son of a Dominican immigrant who dropped out of school in the sixth grade and built a life in this country through sheer will. My mother works two jobs. We nearly lost our apartment because her landlord deliberately structured her Section 8 payments to arrive the day after rent was due, then weaponized that technicality against her. She was paying. He was scamming. And she almost lost everything because she did not have anyone in her corner who understood how to fight back. That experience is not unique to my family. It is the daily reality for countless people across the Bronx, and it is exactly the kind of injustice I have committed my education to addressing. I am currently a rising junior at Fordham University double-majoring in Political Science and International Studies on a pre-law track, carrying a 3.632 GPA. This summer, I was selected as one of five Hope Reichbach Fund Fellows at Brooklyn Defender Services, where I work alongside public defenders in criminal, immigration, and family defense practice. I have watched clients walk into intake interviews carrying criminal charges, immigration holds, and family separation proceedings all at once, three crises converging on one person who deserves competent, compassionate representation. Before this fellowship, I spent over a year at Lincoln Square Legal Services supporting attorneys with research, case preparation, and client advocacy. I have also served as a Campaign Fellow in the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President and returned to the Defying Legal Gravity Legal Empowerment Fellowship as an alumni panelist, co-moderating alongside nonprofit directors at Fordham Law School for the next generation of students who look like me. Being queer, low-income, and the child of immigrants means I have never had the luxury of taking my place in any room for granted. Every opportunity has required proving I belong, often in spaces that were not designed with people like me in mind. That pressure could have broken me. Instead it clarified me. I know exactly why I am doing this, and I know exactly who I am doing it for. My goal is to become a public defender in the Bronx and eventually a policymaker who addresses the root conditions that bring people into courtrooms in the first place. Criminal law, immigrant rights, housing equity, and LGBTQ+ protections are not abstract areas of interest. They are the daily reality of people I love. The positive impact I plan to create is concrete: more people with access to quality legal representation, fewer families facing eviction without counsel, and policy that reflects the lived experience of low-income and marginalized communities rather than talking around it. Financial pressure is real and constant. This scholarship would help ensure that the cost of my education does not become the reason I fall short of what I have committed to building. I am not just pursuing a degree. I am pursuing the ability to walk back into the Bronx with the tools to change what I grew up seeing.

Growing up in the Bronx as the child of Dominican immigrants, I learned early that the path forward runs through education, not because anyone told me so, but because I watched my family navigate a world that wasn't built with them in mind. My mother has worked two jobs for as long as I can remember, holding our household together through sheer will while I held onto the belief that my education could eventually make her load lighter. When we nearly lost our apartment, that belief stopped being abstract. It became urgent. I want to be a public defender and, eventually, a policymaker who reshapes the systems I've spent my life navigating from the inside out. I'm currently a sophomore at Fordham University double-majoring in Political Science and International Studies on the pre-law track, carrying a 3.632 GPA. This summer, I was selected as one of five Hope Reichbach Fund Fellows at Brooklyn Defender Services, where I work alongside staff attorneys across criminal, immigration, and family defense practice. The fellowship places me inside courtrooms, intake interviews, and case strategy conversations that most law students won't see until their third year. A client facing a criminal charge might simultaneously be navigating an immigration hold or a family separation proceeding. Seeing that complexity up close has only sharpened my commitment to the work. That placement didn't come by accident. It came from years of building toward it, through my work at Lincoln Square Legal Services, my time as a Campaign Fellow in the Brooklyn Borough President's office, and my involvement with the Defying Legal Gravity Legal Empowerment Fellowship, where I now return as a panelist rather than a participant. The career I'm pursuing sits at the intersection of law and policy. I want to practice as a public defender, specifically in the Bronx, in the communities that shaped me, and use that ground-level experience to inform legislative work that changes outcomes before people ever enter a courtroom. I've seen what happens when legal systems treat entire communities as afterthoughts, and I've seen what's possible when people inside those systems decide to fight back. Criminal law, immigrant rights, and housing equity aren't abstract policy areas to me; they're the terrain my neighbors live on every day. The goal isn't just to win cases. It's to be the kind of lawyer whose presence in a room shifts what's considered possible for the people sitting across the table. Being a first-generation college student from a low-income household means the cost of this education is never just a number on a financial aid form. It shows up in every conversation with my mother about whether I can afford an unpaid fellowship, whether I should pick up a shift instead of studying, whether the dream is worth the debt accumulating behind it. The answer, every time, has been yes, but that answer gets harder to hold onto without support. My mother has sacrificed too much for me to let financial pressure pull me off course. She works two jobs so I can work toward one that matters, and I take that seriously every single day. This scholarship would allow me to stay focused on building the legal career I've committed to, one grounded in service, shaped by lived experience, and aimed squarely at the communities that need it most. I am not just pursuing a degree. I am pursuing the ability to walk back into the Bronx with the tools to change what I grew up seeing. That is the goal, and I have no intention of stopping short of it.

I am studying Political Science and International Studies at Fordham University on a pre-law track, with the goal of becoming a public defender and policymaker. I chose this path because I have spent my entire life watching systems fail the people I love, and I want to spend my career building something better. But before I could fight for anyone else, I had to learn how to fight for myself. I grew up hearing the word "maricón." In Dominican culture, it gets thrown around casually; at the television, across the dinner table, between relatives who do not pause to consider who might be sitting in the room absorbing it. I was that person in the room. I heard it from people who loved me, people who would have said they would do anything for me, people who did not yet know that the word they were using so carelessly was a word for me. That is what it means to grow up gay and Dominican. You learn very early that love can be real and conditional at the same time. In Latino spaces, queerness is often treated as something to be silent about, not acknowledged, not celebrated, and not welcomed at the family table without conditions. I grew up watching friends get pushed out of their homes for who they were. I loved my culture deeply and felt, at times, that my culture could not fully love me back. What made it harder was that queer spaces did not always feel like home either. I was too Dominican for some rooms and too queer for others, existing in a gap between identities that neither fully claimed me. That tension did not break me. It clarified me. Being gay and Afro-Latino taught me what it means to live in multiple worlds simultaneously, to find belonging where it is not automatically offered. Those are skills I bring into every room where I advocate for people who have also been told they do not belong. I do see myself as someone who gives back to the LGBTQ+ community. I am building toward a legal and policy career that centers the most marginalized, including queer people of color who face compounded systems of exclusion. I am working toward a future where queer Dominicans do not have to choose between their cultural identity and their full selves; by being visible, staying in these spaces, and refusing to disappear. Financially, this scholarship would make a direct difference. I am a low-income, first-generation college student whose mother works two jobs as a single parent to support three children in the Bronx. Last year, my family nearly faced eviction. I contribute income from my own part-time job to help keep our household stable. Every dollar I do not spend on tuition is a dollar that does not force me to choose between survival and the future I am building. The Star Farm Scholarship would not just support my education. It would support the version of me trying to make sure that the next gay Dominican kid from the Bronx does not have to fight as hard just to be seen. That is the community I came from. That is the community I am going back to. And I intend to make sure it is more whole when I arrive than it was when I left.

When my father left Santo Domingo, he left everything he knew. The language, the streets, the people who loved him. He came to America with nothing but the belief that his children deserved something more than what poverty had given him. He built a life in the Bronx as a superintendent, raised four kids, and never finished his own education past the sixth grade. He never got to be a college graduate. That distinction will belong to me. Being a first-generation college graduate will mean that the sacrifice ends here. Not in the sense that struggle disappears, but in the sense that a new baseline is set. My brothers did not pursue higher education. I carry the weight of that too; the awareness that this path is fragile, that it requires fight, and that it is not guaranteed to anyone who looks like me or comes from where I come from. When I walk across that stage, I will not just be receiving a degree. I will be closing a chapter that my father opened when he stepped off a plane into a country that did not welcome him, and proving that his gamble was worth it. But a degree alone is not what shapes a person. It is what you do with the time around it. My extracurricular life has been the education I could not get in a classroom. At Lincoln Square Legal Services, I have sat across from clients facing eviction, helped prepare legal documents, and watched what it looks like when someone fights for a person the system has already written off. That work has humbled me and sharpened me in equal measure. It has shown me that public service is not abstract. It is a specific person in a specific crisis who needs someone present and capable. Through Defying Legal Gravity's Legal Empowerment Fellowship, I was given access to first-year law school curriculum as a high schooler and returned as an alumni panelist at their 2025 Legal Empowerment Conference, co-moderating a panel alongside nonprofit directors who had spent years building organizations across New York City. That experience taught me that leadership is not about seniority. It is about showing up and being willing to use whatever you have learned in service of others. Canvassing Brooklyn neighborhoods as a Campaign Fellow for Antonio Reynoso's congressional campaign taught me how to meet people where they are; how to have conversations about power and participation with people who have been told their voices do not matter. Y-Vote taught me that civic engagement is an act of resistance for communities like mine. Model UN taught me diplomacy, the art of holding your position while genuinely listening to someone who disagrees. Each of these experiences has built something in me that no tuition payment can purchase: clarity of purpose. I know why I am in school. I know who I am doing it for. I know what I want to build when I am done. Being a first-generation college graduate will mean that education is no longer foreign territory in my family. It will mean that when my siblings have children, those children will grow up knowing that college is not someone else's world. It will mean that the Bronx kid whose father collected coins in a wooden money bank to survive is now a lawyer, a policymaker, a person with the tools to fight for everyone who never got that chance. That is what this degree will mean to me. Not a credential. A continuation.

Nobody in my family had ever gone to college before me. Not my father, who dropped out of school in the sixth grade in Santo Domingo to care for his sick mother because they could not afford healthcare. Not my mother, who works two jobs as a single parent to keep three kids housed in the Bronx. Not my older brothers, who did not pursue higher education despite everything my father sacrificed to give them that chance. When I enrolled at Fordham University, I was stepping into territory my family had never mapped. That is what it means to be first-generation. It is not just the financial burden, though that is real. It is the absence of a roadmap. It is not knowing the unspoken rules, not having a parent who can tell you how to talk to a professor, navigate financial aid, or build a resume. It is carrying the weight of everyone who came before you while trying to figure out a world they never got to enter. I have felt all of that. And I have refused to let it stop me. Today I carry a 3.5 GPA at Fordham while working at Lincoln Square Legal Services, serving as a Campaign Fellow for a congressional campaign, and engaging in civic work across New York City. I am a Harvard Law Future-L Scholar. I have sat on panels at Fordham Law School alongside seasoned nonprofit directors. None of that came with a guide. It came from stubbornness, community, and the belief that my background was not a barrier; it was a qualification. The most meaningful way I am working to inspire other first-generation students is through Defying Legal Gravity. DLG is a legal empowerment organization whose fellows are overwhelmingly first-generation students from communities like mine. I was one of them. I sat in weekly workshops at Fordham Law as a high schooler, learning Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, and Criminal Law alongside peers who had never imagined themselves in a law school classroom. That program changed what I thought was possible for someone like me. When DLG invited me back as an alumni panelist for their 2025 Legal Empowerment Conference, I understood what that moment meant. The high school students in that room were watching someone who looked like them, came from where they came from, and had made it through. I was not there to perform success. I was there to make the path feel real and reachable. That is how I plan to inspire first-generation students: not through abstraction, but through presence. By showing up in the spaces where they are, being honest about how hard it has been, and refusing to pretend that the obstacles are not real. The obstacles are real. So is the possibility of moving through them. First-generation students do not need to be told that college is worth it. Most of us already know that and it is why we are here despite everything working against us. What we need is proof that people like us can survive it, thrive in it, and come back to hold the door open. That is what I am committed to doing, not just as a future lawyer and policymaker, but right now, in every room I enter and every student I meet who is walking the same road I walked. My father gave everything he had so I could have a chance he never got. I intend to make sure that chance does not end with me.