Meet GenderAvenger's New Communications Director, Soraya Membreno!
We’ve got big exciting news: starting June 14th, there’s a new Communications Director in town. Meet Soraya Membreno!
Soraya: Hi, GenderAvenger!
A physics teacher in high school once said that, of all her students, the quiet, dark-haired, Hispanic girls were the ones she could never remember.
I was a quiet, dark-haired, Hispanic girl.
I had been the only quiet, dark-haired, Hispanic girl in her advanced physics class for an entire year.
How do you explain the feeling of hearing someone acknowledge, out loud, that they literally do not see you? How do you describe the way the phrase echoes, for years? The kinds of stories I write and work with have a firm grounding in visibility. I obsess over questions of accessibility and respectability politics, gatekeepers and infiltration, culture-straddling and identity building. It is my personal mission to uphold marginalized voices.
I’ve been a writer for 6 years, an editor for an independent literary magazine for 4 years, and a social media marketing coordinator for 3. While I’ve been involved with community activism in the past, protesting police brutality with organizations in New York and teaming up with local activists in Miami to spur immigrant communities to register to vote, the chance to do so on a larger scale through GenderAvenger is something I very much look forward to.
Promoting women in the public dialog is something I’m deeply invested in personally, and I’m thrilled to join the GenderAvenger community and can’t wait to see what we accomplish together.
Claire: Thanks, GenderAvenger!
Thank you, GenderAvenger community! Together, we’ve accomplished incredible things, and it has been a joy getting to know you and interact with you over Twitter, Facebook, email, and more. I am embarking on a new adventure, and I will miss this incredible community and the wonderful GenderAvenger staff.
GenderAvenger’s commitment to women’s voices in the public dialog is evident in the work we’ve done together during this critical phase for the organization. Over 100 GenderAvengers have signed the GA Pledge and agreed not to speak on all-male panels. Who Talks? is releasing powerful new data and actions every month. The GA Tally is available for mobile phones, and every day I’ve had the pleasure of seeing and sharing your Hall of Fame and Hall of Shame tallies. When I started working at GenderAvenger, we were small but mighty, and the community has rapidly grown over the past year and a half. This is an exciting time for the organization, and I can’t wait to see what GenderAvenger does next!