My first camera – a Kodak disc – was given to me in elementary school. I would snap shots on family vacations and around the house, but it wasn’t until I was living and working in Barcelona in 2000 that I picked up a camera more seriously. I loved the life there and started taking a picture a day to be able to remember it all, which propelled me to think more about photography. The consistency of thinking about, and looking for, images hiding in the everyday helped me to translate the way I see in my head onto film. I also discovered that the camera was a way to ask strangers questions, which satisfied a lot of my curiosities. It took me a few more years before I got the courage to quit my corporate job and make the leap. I finally did, and I completed the International Center of Photography’s Certificate Program in Documentary Photography/Photojournalism in 2005 and co-founded the photo collective/agency, Veras Images with a group of my fellow classmates. Prior to ICP, I spent six years in international education and communications. And before that I graduated from Brown University with a BA in Latin American Studies and American Civilization.