I was born in New York City, spent the better part of the first 17 years of my life in a (then) small coastal city called La Romana (i.e. “The Roman” with feminine inflection) on the Southeast corner of Dominican Republic, and have lived in the U.S. ever since. I earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Brooklyn College in 1997. Starting in the year 2000, I enrolled in the graduate program in the Department of Sociology at the University of Arizona, where I was fortunate to earn a Ph.D. in 2006 under the supervision and mentorship of Ron Breiger and Al Bergesen. I then had the privilege to spend the first twelve years of my academic career in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where I was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2012, and to Full Professor in 2016. In 2018, I decided to make the transition to the West (best) coast and moved to California, where I am currently a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at UCLA.