When the last bell rang to mark the end of the school year, Newtown High School eleventh-grade student Briana Rodriguez didn’t head for the beach or home to watch Netflix. Instead, she enrolled in a summer coding class.
A friend introduced me to Generation Q when I was a sophomore in high school. It was there I built the community that would one day become the lifeline I needed during my transition to becoming a woman.
Community organizing was a value instilled in me at a young age. When I was a teenager, I was a participant in almost all of Queens Community House's afterschool programs, including the first Access for Young Women cohort, a girls' leadership program.
I’ve lived in Kew Gardens all my life. My parents were German immigrants who moved to New York during the war. They spoke German and English with us children at home and French when they didn’t want us to understand. That’s what sparked my great love for languages.
