Growing up if you had told me my "Boogie Down Bronxhood" would fuel my soul and turn my ghetto grit into the essence of who I am, I'd call you crazy. Between an abusive childhood, toxic high school relationship, growing up in a poor neighborhood and the limiting beliefs that come with being a woman of Hispanic heritage living in America, the cards were stacked against me.

For many, on paper this would be a sentence to an inevitable drowning. But I discovered all of this was actually my "otherness," a hidden strength beyond all imagination. So I took the reins of my differences and became captain of my own ship. That's what inspires me to do what I do today.