Daniela de la Piedra: Transforming Labels into Lifelong Passion
Daniela de la Piedra | she/her/hers | CLAS ‘03
Interdisciplinary degree in Latin American Studies
When Daniela thinks back on the journey that brought her into UVA, she highlights the uncertainties she felt surrounding her identity. She was born in Chile to a Chilean mother and Peruvian father, and moved back and forth between the U.S. and Peru before settling in McLean, VA. For both middle and high school she attended an international school in the D.C. area, and felt comfortable in being surrounded by all different kinds of people all the time. She and her friends knew that if they went to certain friends’ houses they would be eating all kinds of different foods and hear different languages spoken, and no one really thought anything of it. ‘Where you’re from’ wasn’t really a point of conversation, whereas when she arrived at UVA it felt like that was always the first thing anyone noticed or asked about.
Thus, the transition into life at UVA was a difficult one. While Daniela had initially had her eyes set on attending a Canadian university (UVA was actually the only U.S. school she applied to), for financial and practical reasons she found herself in Charlottesville, VA. It was the first time she began to see how being “different” would affect her experience.
She remembered back to her orientation the Summer before first-year, when she sat on the hill above Runk dining hall, looked down upon a group of white students on one side and black students on the other, and realized she didn’t know where she should go. While her heritage and culture had seemed like secondary details at home, at UVA they felt front-and-center. Topics she didn’t consider abnormal were presented as points of discussion or study--such as when the Cavalier Daily published an article on “interracial dating” about one month into her first year.
“It was another eye-opening moment for me that the world I had been living in was a bubble, and it’s a beautiful bubble, but it’s not how the rest of the world functions, and certainly not how UVA functions.”
Daniela says she quickly realized her label at UVA would be “Latina” and that is how she’d be seen by most. This was okay in her mind, because it gave her a way to take a large University and find a group and niche within it, but considering the way she grew up it was certainly an adjustment. She didn’t feel a major sense of hostility toward particular groups on Grounds, but there were visible divides. She remembers frequent forum discussions on issues of policing because black fraternity parties were broken up by the authorities more than white fraternities engaging in similar behavior.
She also noticed a divide within the Latinx community between Latinx students from the U.S. and international Latinx students. There was a sense of tension around not being viewed as Latin enough, and Daniela had to find a way to navigate that issue both in and outside of the classroom. She shares a story about a visiting Argentinean professor who wrote on one of her quizzes that he was “disappointed” by her lack of knowledge on Peruvian history. She was angered that she had to explain herself to him, clarifying that she didn’t grow up in Peru, or that she knew more about Chile given that she was raised primarily by her mom. The professor even went as far as to compare her to two international students in the class, claiming she should know as much as then. The experience left a bad taste in her mouth. Not only did it feel as though the international students were looking at Latinx students raised in the U.S. like they were “less than,” but now here was a professor suggesting the same thing.
Daniela didn’t get very involved with the Latinx student associations, because at the time they were so heavily led by international students. She instead found her community in Lambda Theta Alpha (LTA), Latin Sorority Incorporated. She, along with Suhey Nevarez and Po Ning Soo-Hoo, founded the Gamma Alpha chapter of LTA on April 29, 2001, and all of her energy went there after. They put on community service events and formed programming around culture and advocacy. One of her proudest moments was bringing the play, “Yo Soy Latina”, to the University. The play depicts six different Latinas with six unique backgrounds, encapsulating the breadth of experience within the ‘Latina’ identity and reflecting the need for a diversity of representation.
Founders of the Gamma Alpha Chapter: Daniela de la Piedra, Po Ning Soo-Hoo, and Suhey Nevarez
The collaborative nature of LTA also spilled over into her involvement with the umbrella organization, the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC). She had friends in other fraternities and sororities and they all worked together to help other chapters form and take shape as they had. They worked together on their passions, and when they weren’t on Grounds they were in coffee shops on the Corner (where there is now a Chase Bank) or hanging out in O’Neills and St. Martens (which are now gone). During this point in the interview, our student interviewer, Kayla Dunn, laments that many of the popular student spots on the Corner, particularly those spaces frequented by multicultural students, have been slowly vanishing. Some things don’t change, though--Daniela and Kayla laugh over the fact that even though they were nearly 20 years apart, they both have ended nights out at Little Johns.
Speaking about her academics, Daniela felt fortunate to have realized pre-med was not the path for her. She talks about not having very good guidance when picking classes. Her parents weren’t as familiar with the U.S. system, and her brothers were both younger. When she was paired with an advisor at UVA, the professor told her to take advanced math and science courses well above what she could handle as a first year. While some advice turned out to be poor, it did help steer her toward her interdisciplinary major. The large, “lost in the shuffle” type pre-med classes pushed her to realize she thrived in smaller environments that encourage discussion-based critical thinking. One course in particular, Race and Ethnicity in the sociology department, was eye-opening because it was the first time she felt she was able to call systemic issues out by name. She felt like her “mind was growing exponentially” and wasn’t as interested in her pre-med classes anymore. She’d wanted to become a doctor for her whole life, but in the first semester of her fourth year she decided she no longer wanted to attend medical school.
It was also in her fourth year that she first got involved with the Bolivar Network--the Latinx alumni group--as a student member of the board, and interned with Dean Pablo Davis to bring personalized resources to Latinx students. Through the Bolivar Network, she met mentors and learned about the opportunities that drove her to her current profession as a lawyer. She felt like she had a lot of energy and passion, but needed a way to channel it. When she graduated she wasn’t sure what would come next, but the Bolivar Network connected her with a job at the Red Cross, and during that Summer a fellow Network member, Gina Flores, planted the seed in her mind that she should go to law school.
All in all, Daniela says she could “write a novel” about what she got out of UVA. Her time at the University helped her discover who she was and who she could be. It allowed her to be more open-minded and comfortable in exploring academic topics for the sake of it. The opportunity to become a Latin American Studies major opened up her eyes and made her realize she didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. It was a testament to her professors and the conversations they encouraged--those smaller classroom environments challenged her to think beyond what she thought she knew, and she still uses those skills as a lawyer advocating for marginalized voices.
UVA also gave her a sisterhood that shaped her entire life--”they were my home away from home.” Her involvement with LTA became the pinnacle of her UVA experience, forging her development as a woman, as a Latina, and as a budding professional. She still identifies as a sister of LTA and views the sorority as a lifelong commitment full of lifelong friendships. All of her line sisters were at her wedding, and one of them is a nurse practitioner who helped deliver her daughter.
“To me, just like my sorority, UVA is a lifetime relationship that I’ll always have, and I’ll always be proud to say that I went to UVA because I am not white. I am Latina and I went to UVA and I feel very proud of that.”
Daniela and her LTA sisters
The advice Daniela would give herself if she could go back to the beginning of her four years at UVA, other than “don’t be pre-med,” would be to take smaller classes earlier. Her one regret is not getting to know her professors more as people, and she especially wishes she had taken a course with Julian Bond. Even though her eyes opened up as she got older, she says she feels like she had “blinders on” as a pre-med student.
With regards to changes she wishes to see for the Latinx community, Daniela hopes peer-mentoring will become more prominent, matching incoming Latinx students with current students and alumni before they even arrive on Grounds. She laments that when you’re in high school transitioning into college life you might not even know what you need, and more mentorship could provide students a sense of community and belonging to ease that process. In general, she feels the broad Latinx community is bonded by their sense of cultural connectivity that is harder to find at a big school at UVA. Throughout her interview she mentions Dean Davis as being a member of admissions who really supported Latinx students and served as a personal mentor for her, but there needed to be more people to turn to.
As an alumna, she feels her involvement has been on-and-off because of life, but she has met more Latinx alums as the years go on. Now that she has kids she wants to get more involved, and travel down to Charlottesville more often. She feels proud to have attended UVA, but is even more proud to be part of the enriching and growing UVA Latinx alumni community. One of her passions going forward will be finding a way to bring more people together, because there is so much the Latinx community can provide one another. Her own story serves as a prime example.