Samantha is an Afro-Latina professional feminist from Brooklyn, NY. She has a Master of Arts degree in Women's History from Sarah Lawrence College, where she received the prestigious Gerda Lerner Award. Her thesis title was, Slavery's Echo on the Lives of Erotic Laborers: Racism, Stigma, and the Politics of Respectability. Samantha also holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees, in Psychology and Women's Studies, as well as a certificate in Spanish from the University of Maryland, College Park. There, Samantha became a member of the first and finest historically black Greek-letter organization, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. In 2001, Samantha received a certificate in Web Design and Graphic Design and has been engaging in online advocacy ever since...

Samantha is active with the New York City Latina Advocacy Network, which was developed in coordination with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) to advance reproductive rights on a local and national level and mobilize Latinas to take action in national campaigns.

Samantha currently works at Legal Momentum (formerly, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), as a Communications Associate. Prior to this, she worked as a Policy and Advocacy Fellow at the NLIRH, where she lobbied U.S. senators to ensure that reproductive rights are recognized and protected in court and in legislative policies, and advocated to end discriminatory policies such as forced sterilization, inadequate access to safe and affordable healthcare, culturally and linguistically inadequate health services, and inadequate access to family planning information and sex education. Samantha has also worked at domestic violence legal clinics, a homeless shelter for women, with pregnant and parenting teenagers, and at civil rights organizations.

Samantha is specifically interested in addressing the ways in which race, class, gender, ethnicity and oppressive laws and policies affect women and people of color. As a scholar-activist, she hopes to mobilize people out of political complacency through online and grassroots advocacy and champion social, economic, and reproductive justice.

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