Born and raised in Houston, Texas to immigrant parents from Mexico and Peru, Priscilla has always been deeply curious about the world around her but also passionate about giving back to her community. Growing up, Priscilla played piano and lacrosse, and spent summers in Monterrey, Mexico improving her Spanish. Priscilla earned a near full-ride to attend Wellesley College, one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the country, and graduated in 2010 with a degree in Political Science and Italian Studies. During her time in college, Priscilla completed the Harvard Graduate School of Design “Career Discovery” summer program in Architecture, and studied piano under the celebrated pianist Sarah Takagi. Another summer she interned on Capitol Hill for a Texan Congressman through an all expenses-paid fellowship through the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) in Washington, D.C.
During the school year, Priscilla served as Vice-President of Mezcla, the Latina student organization on campus and worked part-time for Teen Voices, Inc. as an Editorial Mentor in Cambridge, where she coached high school girls to publish articles for the magazine. Priscilla studied abroad in Bologna, Italy for a full semester at the University of Bologna, where she took all of her political science courses in Italian and enjoyed plenty of gelato. After Wellesley, Priscilla moved to Austin, TX to begin her 2-year full-time Master of Public Affairs (MPA) program at the University of Texas at Austin – Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, where she studied Social & Economic Policy.
At LBJ, Priscilla interned at Annie’s List, a progressive political action committee working to elect more Democrat women across Texas and led fundraising for a Round Rock electoral campaign. She also worked the 2011 Texas legislative session full-time as a Legislative Aide for State Senator Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) through the Gregory Luna Scholars & Fellowship Program. In this role, she staffed the Senator for hearings regarding higher education legislation passing through the Senate Committee on Higher Education. Priscilla spent her summer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), studying race-based affirmative action policies–and wrote her Master’s thesis on this subject.
After graduating from LBJ, Priscilla moved to Miami, Florida to join Teach for America and become a ninth grade English teacher at Miami Northwestern Senior High (Go Bulls!) in Liberty City. During her time at “the West”, Priscilla taught over 300 students, launched an after-school college prep program for top-performing freshmen women, and sponsored the National English Honor Society club for the entire school. More importantly, Priscilla led over 50% of her students to pass the state reading exam for the first time ever. After completing her TFA commitment, Priscilla moved back to Austin, TX to join IDEA Public Schools, an expanding charter school district, as a talent recruiter.
Within a year and a half, Priscilla was promoted to Director of Talent for the Austin region where she led the human capital strategy for the district as it expanded from 1 to 10 schools within 3 years. In 2018, Priscilla earned a full-tuition fellowship through the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management (CGSM) program to attend the UT-Austin McCombs School of Business for her MBA. Currently, Priscilla is a 2nd year MBA candidate and also serves as Co-President of Graduate Women in Business (GWiB) at McCombs, the largest club on campus with over 200 members. While at McCombs, Priscilla has focused on strategy & innovation, and interned at Deloitte Consulting out of their Human Capital practice in Austin, Texas. Priscilla will join Deloitte Consulting full-time as Senior Consultant after graduation in 2020. In her spare time, Priscilla enjoys traveling, exploring new restaurants in Austin, and walking her adorable Shih-Tzu, Kili (short for Kilimanjaro).
