María grew up in Petaluma, California. She received her bachelor’s degree in English at UC Berkeley, which is also where she discovered capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial/folkloric art form. Her love of capoeira led her to Brazil, where she lived for 2 years before riding her bicycle back to California.
Before yli, María worked as a grant-writer for a number of nonprofits in San Francisco and the East Bay. As Communications Director, María is responsible for leading yli’s narrative strategy – developing policies that guide our messaging and content, and overseeing our communications channels, like social media. She also runs Calafia – yli’s statewide youth journalism program that uplifts and sharpens the voices of 10 youth while connecting them to professional media mentors. She is a resident of Oakland, and is grateful every day to live in such a beautiful, vibrant, and diverse city.