Xiomara Vilela Sanchez Moreno was born in Callao, Peru and migrated to California at the age of five years old with her older sister and parents. With their hard work and resilience, her parents were able to carry multiple jobs and earn an income for their family. Through their years living in the US as an undocumented family, her parents gave her and her sisters the most valuable lesson they could ever give; you can start from the bottom and grow your way up no matter what barriers you face.

Through her resilience, passion and humility, she has been able to accomplish the goals she set for herself. Xiomara is a first generation DACA recipient and graduate from Sonoma State University, where she received her Bachelors of Arts in Sociology. There, she became an intern at the DREAM Center and found a community whom she could relate to and be a leader to other undocumented students on campus.In efforts to raise awareness and encourage advocacy for the undocumented community, she co-created a Peer to Peer Undocu Ally training. She also benefited from the opportunity to be a Summer Bridge leader for the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), where she mentored incoming college students and supported them through their transition to college. Through these experiences she has learned the power of her voice and the impact community involvement has.

Xiomara’s goal is to one day create a non-profit that focuses on underrepresented and undocumented communities in efforts to provide mental health resources for them. She stands strongly behind raising awareness about mental health issues and supporting others in healing past traumas and seeing an optimistic way of living. She believes everyone should be able to have the right to seek these resources no matter your immigration status, gender, race or social standing. Xiomara believes that no matter the boxes society places us in, at the end of the day we are all human and should not be treated any differently.

For the DreamSF Placement, Xiomara is placed at Legal Services for Children (LSC). At LSC she will focus on advancing youth rights through working on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) cases or Know Your Rights presentations.

In her free time, Xiomara enjoys surrounding herself with nature whether it be a trip to the beach or finding a mountain trail to hike. She travelled to Hawai’i for a semester through an national exchange program and she found healing through the culture that strongly embraces love for the aina (island). She hopes to one day go backpacking around the world to learn about other cultures.