Sylvia Rivera is a BLACK/Afro- Puerto Rican storyteller and public health professional.

Her public health training is critically informed by her experience and engagement with coloniality, and Black feminist, Latinx, and decolonial theoretical traditions.

She is inspired by the countless stories that have surfaced among the many women of color in her life in their every day spaces/places of respite, safety and ‘home’.

Her work engages the creative arts and seeks to center the voices of Black/Afro Disaporic women and other women of color (WOC). By doing so, she helps WOC make their stories visible; stories that have been made invisible by settler colonial logics and power structures.

Why? Because when women of color snap back at the systems of oppression that seek to silence them they transform the margins into a radical site of resistance.

EDUCATION:

BSN: Linfield University

MPH: OHSU-PSU School of Public Health

AWARDS:

APHA-Kaiser Permanente Community Health Fellowship: 2023-2024