Prompt #4, Folio Café, week of 2/20: When promoting yourself as a diversity hire (reframing the conversation), how do you describe your diversity as a strength? Why is being diverse important to you and your career choice?

I describe my diversity as a strength because I bring a different perspective. I think that there is more than me than being Latino. As interpreters we voice for an array of different types of people. It is becoming more and more common for members of the deaf community to want people of their background to voice for them. This is especially true in the black deaf community. Many wish to have interpreters who are familiar with black colloquialism and AAVE.  

Not only do I have my Latino roots, but I grew up in a low-income household and in a primarily English-speaking community. Because I grew up in a first-generation American household, I am familiar with the common occurrences such as explaining one's culture, translating for your parents or even eating different foods or observing different holidays. It is important for me to express that to agencies and employes so that they can know how well I am versed with certain subjects and also how comfortable I am in certain scenarios.  

Diversity to me isn't just limited to my ethnicity, and financial background but also to my religious background. To me when I am explaining how I can make a better candidate to people through my diversity I like to explain scenarios in which I had to use my diversity in order to succeed. Volunteering at a Deaf camp this summer I was strongly encouraged to sign with parents who were learning to sign. I often would make an effort to only sign with them so that they would need to rely on their children to interpret. This showed the parents that communicating was not ways and that they should give their children a lot more credit as they are trying to learn ASL themselves.