Annalisa Ureña ’23 is an Upper from Tampa, Florida and lives in Stimson House on campus. She is an avid dancer and a board member of Campuses Against Cancer, the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, and Service in Stem. Ureña also participates in spaces within the Community and Multicultural Development (CaMD) office as both an Afro-Latinx Mentor Program (AMP) coordinator and a member of Alianza Latina.
In CaMD, I am an AMP coordinator, which is the Afro-Latinx Mentoring Program. So if you identify within the realm of Afro-Latinx, which is Afro-Latinx-American Society, then you qualify to be in AMP. What AMP [does] is they will pair new [Juniors] and Lowers with Uppers and Seniors to kind of guide them through the school for the first year and beyond. It’s a way to form really great friendships. We [also] have really good events to help integrate and help adjust to what’s probably a very new setting for a lot of people. Dealing with different diversity, different people. It’s a big adjustment, so we just help guide them through as underrepresented students.
My [Junior] year… I would always go to CaMD because my prefects, [Angie Collado ’21, Niya Harris ’21, and Martina Gil Diaz ’21,] were all pretty involved [with] CaMD. They were always pushing us to be there…then I just got involved from there, going to more and more events. Then, the CaMD presentations. I would have never gone if my prefects didn’t tell me to go, but I got really interested in those. That’s when I decided I wanted to be part of CaMD. So then, when applications came out for the next year, I decided that I really wanted to do it.
I’m also a part of GSA, which is the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. I’m also on [the board of] Campuses Against Cancer, as well as Service in Stem. Through CaMD I also attend Alianza [Latina] meetings—for people who identify as Latinx—and I am also a part of [Andover Dance Group,] Hypnotiq, Fusion, and Blue Strut.
I have to say dance clubs are the most fun, but I know that I’m going to get the most satisfaction out of AMP because it has the most impact [on] other students.
Before I came to Andover, I wasn’t really educated as much in the terms of social justice. When I came to Andover, it was a big relearning process for me. And through that process, I got to really appreciate social justice and what it can do for people. I think being a woman of color… unfortunately it’s not really an option to not care about social justice. Being a woman of color just really motivates you… To feel like you have to do something, which maybe isn’t the healthiest thing ever, but you kinda assume that position, just by nature.
I don’t know if it’s a place, but the steps of [Samuel Phillips Hall.] I love sitting in front of there and having breakfast with my friends. I just love the vibes and the steps in the morning. Right now, it’s not too cold, the sun’s out, and I just like sitting there with my friends. It’s really calming and not very stressful. But inside [a building, it] has to be CaMD.
Normally it would be the pork stir-fry, but now, I’d have to say adobo. It’s a Filipino dish. That’s my favorite. They do something with the pork and it’s so good.
That’s a really hard question. I’d say I’m more of a STEM person, but I do really like the intersectionality between STEM and social justice because it is now becoming a more popular field, and just seeing the growth of it is really nice. Seeing how both can play into each other to create better change for the world is really interesting.
I always have this debate with myself all the time. If I don’t end up doing something in mechanical engineering, I think I want to be an immigration lawyer. It’s kinda like my back-up, but not really my back-up because I really want to do both. There’s a little bit of conflict.
[Caffè] Nero — always my favorite. It’s so overpriced, but I really like the punch cards and I just love doing work there. And the vanilla iced latte is always my favorite. And banana bread, I love it so much. I always get it.
