Alejandro Galicia Cervantes

Alejandro is a local elotero from South Sacramento. A community changemaker by craft, program developer by training, entrepreneurial scholar at heart: his mission is not only to curate a longitudinal study mapping legal status disparities but to build systems to support our most vulnerable communities. 

Alejandro has a diversified living experience that includes a small rural town, a big city, and a suburb. The housing crisis made it impossible to live in a comfortable home, while in Van Nuys, he lived in a rotten/cockroach infested 2-bedroom-home that housed 4 seperate families. Over-policing and racial profiling made it impposible for Alejandro to feel safe selling corn on the streets. He, and his family, experienced harassment by LAPD and were under constant fear of being robbed at gun-point. On school grounds he had his language, culture, and identity belittle and shamed by students, staff, and English Language Learners (ELLs) curriculum (4th grade to 9th grade). "If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left… I suffered at the hands of both, but I resent the schools more" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me 25). Like Coates, Alejandro resents the school system more and hopes to change it. He hopes to leverage Transformative Justice as a praxis to change racial microaggressions, further disrupt the school to prison pipeline, and reimagine STEM education. 

Alejandro graduated from University of California – Davis double majoring in Political Science - Public Service and Economics. He was a Donald A. Strauss Foundation Scholar, a CLYLP Comcast Fellow and an Undergraduate Fellow at the Transformative Justice in Education Center at UC Davis. While being infatuated with politics of everyday life and looking for answers as to why his community is in the state it is, Alejandro strives to continue to directly impact his community. He has a heart for mentoring and often uses it as a praxis for changing individual outcomes. 

Alejandro is a trailblazer, founding his own organization, Dream STEM Initiative, on a mission to expand computer science literacy and train the next generation of Immigrant STEM Professionals. He is a current intern at MENTOR's Government Relations Team. He is the chairman for Associated Students of the University California Davis' (ASUCD) DREAM Committee. He serves on the Community Advisory Board for Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, MENTOR California Advisory Board, and the My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Sacramento Coordinating Committee. His service is emblematic of his commitment to community. Upon graduation, Alejandro hopes to continue a lifetime of civic service and academic scholarship. He is a future advocate, author, and CEO.