Lucero Rocha de la Cruz

Lucero Rocha de la Cruz is a 19-year-old Latina with roots in Tamaulipas, Mexico, as well as an hermana mayor, and first-generation college student. Everything she does is for her family, and everything she is is because of them. She was born in Durham but was raised in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She is currently a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is applying to the School of Nursing. She hopes to conduct research about how racial-ethnic identity in the educational environment affects the health of students. It is her hope that through research she can learn how to improve the existing mechanisms of health treatment for students. Through grounded research, she hopes to substantiate educational policy changes that can help improve the educational experience for Latinx students. As a nurse, she would like to uplift the health concerns of the Latinx community because very often her community is the last one to which the government provides aid. She wants to give back to the community who made her the woman she is today and hopes to leave the world better than it was when she found it.