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Transcript
My name is Tia Torres. I grew up in the Hill District. I’m a middle child of five, but we’re all spread out. Youngest and oldest is 20 years apart. So at one point I was the youngest middle child and oldest. Depending on who was living in my mom’s house at the time. My mom’s a single mom and then my dad’s side is Puerto Rican and my mom said is Black, so there was like a lot of different cultures that I grew up learning.
I went to Liberty Elementary in Shadyside. I then went to Frick Middle School, which was in Oakland. I graduated high school at University Prep and Hill District. I did go to college. I went for business and it was interesting. I think college is necessary for people who like to learn in the educational space but I also don’t think college is for everyone. It was for me. I needed that structure. But I know a lot of people do not do well in college because of the structures. So college was good for me. But I know plenty of people that college was not good for. I really take my time when I talk to young girls about college to see if that’s something that they want to do or if it’s something that they think they cannot do, or if it’s they don’t want to do it because of the limitations that they have.
My older sister, having a kid really young, changed my life because I had to step up to help babysit and learn how to, like, take care of my nephew, which was really drastic because we were only six years apart. My nephew and I are really close now. We grew up like brother and sisters and so that helped me learn that I don’t want kids. I’ve already technically had one, I guess so I’m like, I’m good. I know what it’s like to parent a little bit, not not fully, but that was really drastic. It changed the type of programming that I was in. It changed the type of people that I was around.
My main goal is to work myself out of a job. I don’t want to be at this organization for the rest of my life. I believe in liberation, so if we are organizing for education rights for black girls, then I want to be able to leave this organization with other black girls to continue that legacy and then I want to move out of the country. I don’t know what country I want to live in next. I just want to experience life in a different country for about 5 to 10 years and come back sporadically just because I have nieces and a nephew right now. I want to travel. I want to go, as I said, with my best friend recently is to visit every country in Africa before we’re 50 and we got like 25 years to do that. So that’s the main goal I’m thinking about right now too.
So my dreams changed often. I believe the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a firefighter, and then I realized that you can die from it and I was like, no, and then, I kept saying after I watched Love and Basketball, I kept saying I’m going to be the first girl in the NBA. That wasn’t for me. I just was good at it, but it was not life for me. I fell in love with organizing students and student voice and so currently one of my dreams I’m kind of living out. I’m currently the Director of an organization and I love it because I get to work with high school girls. I get to amplify their voice and their experiences in high school and they are amazing and brilliant, so it doesn’t feel like work, even though there’s a lot of tough work.