In fall 2023, Kristhel Maholy Vernaza Sanchez stepped onto the UW-Madison campus for the first time, carrying the weight of her suitcases and the weight of generations before her.
Vernaza Sanchez is the youngest of five children and a first-generation college student studying psychology and sociology with a certificate in political science. Her journey to Madison took her across the world, through a global pandemic, and always remained rooted in her lifelong passion for activism.
Born and raised in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, resources were limited and the opportunity to move upward socioeconomically was rare. Despite this limiting environment, Vernaza Sanchez’s mother taught her how to break through and move up.
“I really want to put an emphasis on the role of my mom, who exposed me to things that shaped me as a human and also shaped my mind to not be limited to what everybody would say people from my community can achieve,” Vernaza Sanchez says.
At the age of 13, Vernaza Sanchez dedicated her time to social causes spanning from women’s rights, to adolescent education. Her mother, who has been deeply involved in fighting for the rights of domestic workers, encouraged her to try anything and everything.
She played soccer, ran track, cycled, danced and did everything she could to stay busy and stay engaged. This all came to an abrupt stop when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She found herself confined to her home, isolated from her thriving life and asking herself: What do you do when the world stops moving around you?
In June of 2020, Vernaza Sanchez participated in a national conference among other peers, focusing on the obstacles Ecuadorian children face. After the conference, Vernaza Sanchez and her peers founded RODDNA: the Red de Organizaciones por la Defensa de los Derechos de la Niñez y Adolescencia, which is a national network dedicated to defending and uplifting children and adolescent rights.
“That’s when I figured out that was my niche, that was my passion,” Vernaza Sanchez says. “At RODDNA, it was a space created by youth and peers, and it gave me a deeper meaning of what activism was.”
Vernaza Sanchez’s goal in a post-pandemic world was to attend university. The process proved difficult, requiring significant amounts of money, resources and support, none of which were immediately accessible to her. Instead, she took an unplanned gap year in which she considers the best thing that could have happened to her.
During the gap year, she achieved many firsts. She traveled abroad alone to Switzerland and represented RODDNA and Ecuador at the United Nations during a discussion about children’s rights in her country. She dedicated time to giving back to her community and worked side by side with the U.S. Embassy’s college advising program, which ultimately gave her the support she needed to apply to university.
Then, in 2023, she received her official acceptance to UW-Madison under the King-Morgridge Scholars Program.
Preparing for the move to the U.S. was an exciting time for Vernaza Sanchez but also a time-requiring significant adjustment. She had studied English since she was seven, learning words through Justin Bieber songs and an English academy. However, learning English in a classroom, versus the style of day-to-day conversations, was entirely new to her.
“When you come here, you notice that the way people speak, the way people communicate, is not as you learn it in an academy,” she says. “It’s way different, so you have to adapt.”
Early on, homesickness and the lack of a support system hit her hard, especially during the winter when she found herself missing her mother’s voice and home-cooked meals.
To try and cope, she often thought back to her older brother, who gave her one piece of advice before her move: “Create your community.”
Vernaza Sanchez dedicated her first year mostly to academics, trying to adjust to the style of an American education, but felt like there was a hole in her life where community was missing. In fall 2024, Vernaza Sanchez joined the Morgridge Center for Public Service as a community engagement education intern, a role that combined her passion for service and desire for community.
Reflecting on her time at the center, Vernaza Sanchez appreciates how much it helped strengthen her communication skills, especially with a new language. More importantly, the center filled the gap in her life and gave her a strong community to rely on.
“The Morgridge Center is a place where I don’t only have peers, but also staff members that serve as mentors, and are always looking out for me and connecting me to other people on and off campus,” she says. “That’s something that I really value a lot.”
She has been able to build relationships not only with coworkers, but with local organizations like Centro and the Rotary Club. Now, she works with an initiative supporting digital democracy and peacemaking within vulnerable sectors of the Ecuadorian population.
Journeying to the U.S. awakened something inside her and taught her that in America, she isn’t just a Black woman — she is an Afro-Latina woman. Looking forward, Vernaza Sanchez is steadfast and dedicated to becoming a politician back in Ecuador and holding public office where she could make real change.
“Historically, women and Black people haven’t been represented in those decision-making spaces, and I would love to be the person who fills that gap and opens the door for other people to create a positive impact,” she says.
While she continues her educational journey, Vernaza Sanchez remains a student, a mentor, an activist, a daughter and a leader, whose journey knows no bounds — hoping that all of this work will culminate in her innate purpose of public service.
By Sammie Garrity