yeehawing through life
Howdy!
When I was growing up in Brownsville, Texas someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said archeologist, paleontologist, Egyptologist—anything that had to do with digging. I wanted to understand why we named things what we named them, why the grass was green, and whether green could be blue if we simply called it so.
I’m still digging.
These days the digging looks different. I write poems and parody albums. I build brand strategies for mission-driven organizations. I ask questions about voice and choice and what happens when we stop outsourcing either one. I make things in whatever form the work calls for—and the work asks for a lot of forms.
What I make
The short answer is: a lot of things.
The longer answer is that I’ve never been able to stay in one lane, and I finally stopped trying to stay on the road.
I write poetry, songs, screenplays, and essays. I’ve performed in musicals, designed sound for theater, choreographed dances, painted, photographed, made short films, and built a comedy YouTube channel during the dawn of the YouTubers. I co-created a live children’s educational show about a poacher named Petey who steals endangered animals, and the audience of kids has to help catch him. I wrote a feminist media critique of Victoria’s Secret in college and a heartwrenching fairy tale (a lá the original dark versions of fairytales) in Spanish set on the Juárez border.
I’ve written two songs about hugs from the perspective of a cactus who just wants a hug, and another about a post-divorcé trying to learn to self-soothe.
In 2020, my friend Katie Boughal and I made A Very COVID Christmas Album under the moniker Partners in Rhyme—a full parody holiday album in the style of the millennial Now That’s What I Call Music, featuring tracks like “Carol of the Zooms,” “Feliz Sanidad,” and “Oh, Come All Ye Hateful” (which includes the lyric “Oh please don’t be an asshole, make a casserole instead” which I’m still finding myself wishing people would do). It was the funniest and most relatable thing I’d ever been a part of in the middle of that damn pandemic.
And yes, fresh out of college, coming out of my Women’s Studies minor I also wrote a song about how women fart, too. And in 2012, it felt like the world needed a song about it
What I’m building right now
Ruckus: a poetry collection in four parts: Relics, Ruins, Revel, Rhapsody. It’s a reclamation narrative about inherited patterns, voice, silence, and the decision to come back to yourself. Ninety pages of everything I carried quietly for over a decade.
Homecomings: a one-woman musical. Still in development. Still figuring out how to be the writer and the performer and the person the story is about, all at the same time.
Choices: an essay series about the smallest, most powerful decisions we make every day. About voice, language, perspective, measurement, community, and the rebellious act of caring. Written with collaborators I love and trust.
Meaning Makers: a dramatic poem-meets-parable with archetypal figures. It's about the machinery and meaning underneath everything.
And lots of other things swirling around…
The day job
By day, I’m a Senior Brand Strategist at The Black Sheep Agency, a mission-driven creative and communications agency in Houston. I build brands, name things, write messaging frameworks, and help organizations figure out how to put the heart of what they do into words.
Before that, I spent over a decade doing communications work across nonprofits, government, corporate, and every other setting—from the Houston Public Library Foundation to the City of Pearland to Nino Properties.
The work I’m proudest of doesn’t fit neatly in a résumé and was not restricted to my job title—you’re probably starting to notice that nothing I do on my terms fits neatly anywhere.
One of my proudest moments was co-creating a youth leadership fellowship at Positive Tracks with my dear friend and justice-worker Andrea Calderón, because it centered young people’s voices and agency in a way that made the mission come alive. Another was building up a volunteer program at Friends of the Houston Public Library where friendships were made, impact was real, and it felt like the living version of what people talk about when they talk about community.
People first. Then process. Then progress. That’s how I’ve always worked, and it’s the thing that connects the strategist part of me to the artist and vice versa. Both are listening for what’s underneath.
The thing that connects it all
Everything I make—whether it’s a brand name for a client, a poem about grief, a 90s rap about a misunderstood Bigfoot, or a short film about famous women in history fighting zombies that became zombies from the loss of critical thinking—all ask the same thing of us: to notice, to revel and to think.
I’m from the border and the city. I’ve lived in Houston longer now than I lived in my hometown. I carry both everywhere I go. I make things that are funny and sad and interesting and boring and messy and precise—because that’s life, y’all.
Perpetually digging
I used to call myself a creative generalist. Then an MC Planner, Creative Conquistadora, and Compulsive Researcher. Then the Chief Excavation Officer. These days I like Professional Noticer. Regardless of my made up arbitrary titles, you can always catch me somewhere digging, wandering and wondering.
I know it says it in the footer, but really, I’m happy you’re here.