Building pathways to higher education that everyone can access
In this alumni episode of the Imagine A World podcast, host Eli Cahan (2019 cohort) speaks with Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca (2024 cohort) who imagines a world where every child has access to quality education that can get them to a college experience as they wish, where they wish, regardless of where they were born.
Sarahi reflects on her journey from being told she was not meant for college to becoming a Knight-Hennessy scholar. She shares how finding mentors helped her carve out her own path, and how her experiences empowered her to build platforms that support undocumented students in pursuing higher education. Sarahi also speaks about the role of community, faith, and religion in her life. She reflects on the opportunity of the current moment to imagine and build systems that work for everyone. The episode concludes with Sarahi sharing her favorite Knight-Hennessy Scholars memories, including an iconic trip to Japan.
Guest
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca was born in Michoacan, Mexico, and raised in Redwood City and East Palo Alto, California. She is pursuing a master’s degree in policy organization and leadership studies at Stanford Graduate School of Education. She graduated from Santa Clara University with a double major in ethnic studies and sociology. Sarahi aspires to launch a career in public service to enact policies that promote equity in education and immigration. She founded Dreamers Roadmap, a national app that helps undocumented students find scholarships for college.
During the COVID pandemic, she spearheaded a $2.7 million rent campaign for essential workers. She also leads Supplies4Farmworkers, which distributes essential supplies to local farmworker camps. Sarahi was named a White House Champion of Change and listed in Forbes’ 30 under 30. She is also a recipient of the Ohtli Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Mexican consulate.
Imagine A World team
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss (2021 cohort). The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss, and Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Now I get it. I had to go through that to build the grit and tenacity, to rebuild systems for people like me. It goes back to this very cliche quote of, "If not you, then who? And if not now, when?" That became my motto. Okay. If this current system does not apply to people like me, what system can? And if it doesn't exist, let me build it. I imagine a world where every child around the world has access to education, not only any education, but quality education that can get them to a college experience as they wish, where they wish, regardless of where they were born or their zip code.
Willie Thompson:
Welcome to the alumni edition of the Imagine A World Podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars. We are here to give you a glimpse of Knight-Hennessy scholars who have graduated and are making a difference in the world through their personal and professional endeavors. In each episode, we talk with KH alumni about the world they imagine and what they're doing to bring it to life.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
My name is Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca. I am from the 2024 cohort and I graduated in 2025 with my master's in policy organizational leadership studies from the Graduate School of Education.
Willie Thompson:
In this episode, Sarahi shares her journey as a first gen college student, building and rebuilding systems to support the marginalized and downtrodden and so much more.
Eli Cahan:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Imagine A World Alumni Edition, the fun edition. We have a live studio audience of one today, so it's a very exciting moment for the alumni podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with very esteemed colleague, Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca. Sarahi, thank you so much for joining us.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
Eli Cahan:
Do you want to introduce yourself to the audience?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Absolutely. My name is Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca. I am from the 2024 cohort and I graduated in 2025 with my master's in policy organizational leadership studies from the Graduate School of Education, and I imagine a world where every child around the world has access to education, not only any education, but quality education that can get them to a college experience as they wish, where they wish, regardless of where they were born or their zip code.
Eli Cahan:
Amazing. Well, I want to talk all about this, but I do want to take a step back and learn a little bit more about your journey, because I know your journey has been very full and very exciting. So can you share a little bit about everything that preceded your journey or your winding up at Stanford for your degree?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Well, that's quite a journey. Yes, for sure. It took me 20 years to get my undergraduate degree to start. I came here from Mexico when I was four years old. I'm the youngest of 11 and the first one in my family to be able to have the opportunity to go to K through 12 here in the United States. So I think for me, it just became very easy to be like, "Okay, sure. Do good in school, go to college. Very normal thing to do." Everything changed for me though my junior year of high school. I was at UCLA actually, which was my dream school at the time, and we were doing a tour and towards the end of the tour, they handed all of us a paper FAFSA. Here we go, aging myself. Nothing is on paper nowadays.
Eli Cahan:
But you knew how to read, which is great. It's a dying art these days, yeah.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
So I go home with this form, not thinking too much of it. By this time, both my parents had decided to self-deport back to Mexico, but very normally or very commonly for me growing up, I would just fill out every form that came home. They didn't speak English, they didn't know what the form said, and a lot of that was around just me becoming almost like the family clerk. Just I filled everything out, sign here. But for this one, there was a section on the form that I couldn't figure out how to fill out, and it was a social security part. I call my mom back in Mexico. I tell her, "What's this number?" She left this [inaudible 00:04:24] behind where all of the important papers were. I shuffled through it once, twice. Nothing there. I'm like, "Okay, it's not here," and she's like, "I don't think you have that."
I think at this point, neither of us knew what this was genuinely. I go to my sister whom I had stayed with. I tell her what was going on and she's like, "Oh, yeah. You weren't born here, so you don't have one." Very casually. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Okay, now what? I need to fill this up to get my financial aid like all my friends." She's like, "I don't know, go talk to your counselor. I don't know, figure out with school or something." So that's what I did. I went to my counselor, told her what was going on. My sister said I wasn't born here, I need this number, and if I don't fill this out, I can't submit this form. And just again, people I think just, I don't know, maybe take these things too lightly. She said, "People like you don't go to college."
So I think for me at that point, I was like, "Okay. Well, wait a minute. Wait, what? What do you mean people like you?" One, what does that mean? My whole life, here I am growing up thinking I'm just this average American kid doing good in school to go to college, and depending on FAFSA, all of my friends grew up in a very low income, predominantly Black and Brown community. We were all depending on FAFSA to go to college. So for this person to be like, "You can't apply because you weren't born here and because people like you don't go to college," I'm like, "This cannot be the answer." So in that particular moment, I think for me, I personally just shut down. I went through what you, I guess, nowadays would call an identity crisis. I didn't know what she meant.
As I started looking into the details of what this was and what people like you meant, well, basically that was one, I couldn't apply for or qualify for FAFSA. I couldn't get a job like everyone else my age, I couldn't get a driver's license, loans were not being given to people like me, and even looking at community college, I had to pay international fees. So even if I worked 24 hours a day, there was no way that I could pay for that. That's where it kind of all starts for me and why it took me this long to get this education. Long story short, graduate top of my class. Every bell and whistle you can imagine, I got honors awards, president's awards, all kinds of recognitions. But for me, that held no weight because I had no idea what I was going to do after high school.
I leave Los Angeles, come to the Bay Area, and it was a lady from my church actually who starts guiding me, and she was like, "What are you doing for college?" And I honestly avoided her as much as I could because it was still so painful for me to talk about. I think at that point I was still trying to navigate what it was that I was... One, what was I? Two, what was this new reality of mine and how do I survive in this reality? And to my surprise, all of my siblings were also undocumented. And I think for me growing up, that was probably one of the most shocking parts. Again, we weren't wealthy or rich, no, but we always had a roof over our head and we always had food in the fridge. So it never occurred to me that something was wrong.
People would get ready in the morning, I'd go off to school, they'd go off to work, we'd come home, have dinner, nothing was wrong. But what I didn't know and the conversation was never had was that they were all doing very labor-intensive work. They were all getting paid cash or "under the table," quote unquote, and I just was not aware of any of this. So I think coming to that realization of how much was going on and how little I actually knew of their situation that they were living in was very difficult for me to process. And then she connected me to her son, who was a counselor at De Anza, which is a local community college here, and he's the one that changed everything for me. He's like, "Yes, it's hard for you to go, but you can go. This is AB540, which is the in-state tuition for undocumented students in California. You qualify for that. There's very few scholarships that allow undocumented students to apply. Here's a couple, apply to those."
So that changed everything for me. So I went to community college that same year, dropped out a year after, after my father got diagnosed with cancer. He eventually passed away. I didn't go back to school until I got DACA in 2013, did community college for two years. Then that's where I start getting involved with EdTech and I go to a national competition with Voto Latino and the MacArthur Foundation, and I win first place in the country getting $100,000 to basically build an app called Dreamers Roadmap.
And mind you, I go into this competition being one of the sole woman founders, the only one in community college, had never launched a company before. A pitch deck, I did not have it. It was like a very wonky... I went on Word, grabbed the phone, picture, put a bunch of little boxes and things on top of it. I'm like, "You get the gist of it. This is what it will look like if you fund it, but what I want is for my story not to repeat again. The money is out there. I have found it. People just don't know how to find it and this tool will help people do that."
So I come home with $100,000 to build it and coming back home, I decided to leave school to dedicate myself 100% to launching this company, and the company is now 10 years old. In that span, I got married, I had two children. COVID happened. And in the, I want to say either the summer right before... Yeah, the summer of 2019, I believe Harvard recruits me for a master's, which was at the time I'm like, "It's probably spam. I probably subscribed to some newsletter somewhere." I reached out to my friend who's a professor at Harvard. He's like, "This is not spam. They want you to come. You should reply." And I was pregnant at the time, so I'm like, "I can't move to Boston. I cannot have a newborn out there and my husband's work is here."
So I declined Harvard with a lot of pain, but that's actually what encouraged me to look back into continuing my education and getting that bachelor's because I told them I don't have a bachelor's, and they're like, "We know that. We still want you." So that was flattering, and I almost was convinced to not do a bachelor's, but I was like, "You know what? No, I think I should finish what I started and get this bachelor's," which became the launchpad to consider grad school because I think because it took me so long to get my bachelor's degree. And for my family, again, I'm the youngest of 11, first of my family tried to do all of this, the finish line for me was obtaining my bachelor's.
So I want to say maybe a couple months before graduation, the Office of Fellowships reaches out and they're like, "Hey, have you considered grad school?" I'm like, "Absolutely not. I already am graduating from undergrad with zero debt and that took so much time, research to get those scholarships in. I can't afford grad school," and they're like, "No, no, you qualify for Rhodes, Fulbright and Knight-Hennessy," and I had no idea what those things were. As I started looking into them, I discovered that they were full-ride master's programs. If I were to get in, and again, I'm now thinking of my family first, I couldn't move to Europe to go to Oxford for Rhodes. So Stanford was the best thing, being that I live here in the Bay Area. So I applied with lots of faith, but a lot of skepticism because I'm like, "What are the odds that I get in and that I get in with Knight-Hennessy?" But you have to trust in fate and the people that believe in you before you believe in yourself, and that's what got me here as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Yeah, such an incredible path that you've really paved for yourself against the odds. It's funny, you talk about what are the odds, because it seems like by the time that you were talking about applying to Knight-Hennessy, you had defied so many freaking odds by then, and yet you still look in the mirror and say, "What are the chances? Why would they pick me?" Which I know is a sentiment we've heard over and over on the alumni podcast, and I feel like a lot of people feel that way.
I think I want to rewind for a second and say, you felt this identity crisis when this advisor said to you, "You can't go to college." What exactly was the identity crisis at that moment? Was the identity crisis that you were not an American citizen? Was the identity crisis that here you were knocking your classes out of the park and that might not lead to anything, so what is being valedictorian if you can't go to college? Was it a financial, you had all your needs met and yet this now natural next step was a financial impossibility? What was the identity crisis and how did you reckon with that?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Yeah, so that's a great question, and I think it's a combination of all of those things. I think first and foremost was this literal label of people like you, and I think in that moment, I almost wanted to be like, "Please elaborate. What are you talking about? What does that mean?" So that's the initial gut punch of people like you don't go to college. I'm like, "No, no, I've done everything you've asked me. I have the grades. I do community service in my community. I do community service in my church and leadership and everything that you can imagine in school. What do you mean people like me don't go to college?" So I think that's the first one. The second one becomes, I think, the literal definition of the legal status, which in that moment I do recall being extremely frustrated with my family and with my mom specifically, because I was raised mainly by her on why she never disclosed this to me.
And I think to her defense, she had no idea that this would ever affect me in going to college because no one had ever done it before. And I have friends who are now in my ecosystem. Of course, once you discover this identity, if you will, you start creating these little cohorts of people who share this identity with you. And I have very dear friends to this day who they were told since they were very little, the truth of their status, the truth of their situation, and for better or for worse, they never really cared about school because of that exactly, like why? Why invest so much time? Why invest so much in my academics if it's going to be worth nothing? And on the contrary, I was so oblivious to that that I was like, "Nope, head on, AP classes, straight A kid, nerdy, honors, all the things, that's me." And I think for me, what I really wanted was make my family proud.
There was parts of that identity that I did knew. I knew that I was an immigrant. I knew that I was the only one who had had this opportunity, so I felt a lot of that weight and pressure on myself to represent my family in this kind of spectrum of education and academics, if you will. And for a lot of people that migrate to this country, especially for my parents and their reason is to give us a better life. For my siblings, they all came as teenagers, had to drop out of school because they had to sustain themselves. They didn't have my parents here. For me, it was getting those academics to the T and becoming the first person in my family to go to college. And I almost gave that responsibility to myself and that weight. That's the way that I could repay them, their sacrifice.
Because I think that that's the other part that oftentimes in the conversation of immigration, there's this big dilemma, they just come here and they take jobs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, do you really think people choose to leave their home and leave their friends behind their culture, their family? No. People don't just wake up and be like, "I want to leave." People don't do that. Something had to go really wrong to pick up your children, your few belongings they you can carry in your bag, cross a desert with a four-year-old and a 10-year-old, knowing the risk that you can die on that trajectory, and that was your better option. And I think for me, thinking of that kind of history and journey of my family, this is how I would repay them.
So that's why I think for me it was also just super important to steadfast to that goal of however long it takes me, I have to get there eventually. My dad obviously didn't live to see it happen. My mom was in her 80s, so she did get to see it by me traveling there because after my father passed away, she dropped all her cases, which is the other part I didn't mention. After they left, they were told that they would be back in six months with a green card. They left and got a 10-year bar, which means that in 10 years, they couldn't try any attempt in adjusting status, and in that 10 years is when I lost my father. I never got to see him again.
So it's again, all these complexities of identities and crises at the time where it's like, "Why me? Why is this happening? What did I do wrong?" And it's not to say there's someone to blame. It's like a system, right? And we can get into a whole other conversation of systems and what's not working and for whom they are working and who they were designed for from the beginning.
Eli Cahan:
Let's talk for a moment about that in the sense of when someone says to you the sentence, "People like you don't..." That's something that I'm sure many people listening to this podcast, many potential Knight-Hennessy applications have heard at one point in their journey or another, and it strikes me that often folks' response to that is maybe to feel defeat or imposter syndrome, maybe to give up. Those who don't give up and maybe their response is to try to prove that wrong in an individual way. What strikes me about your journey, your work with Dreamers Roadmap, with the Rent campaign, with Support for Farm Workers is you figured out how to actualize your dream, and then you started building new systems to try to solve problems for, quote unquote, "people like you." And so I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about how that one sentence has informed the various projects that you've done, which of course have touched on many different broken systems, but each maybe to this central thread.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
You're absolutely right. This sentence of, "People like you," did end up shaving a lot of why I became and who I still am to this day. In the moment it was painful, it was confusing. In retrospect, I understand because to a certain extent, she was right. I was different, I am different, and these systems weren't built for me. So to your point, exactly, what do we do when we're defeated by these systems, not built for us? And mind you, yes, I have a "success story," quote unquote, but in between that success, there was a lot of downfall, there was a lot of crying, there was a lot of doubt, a lot of depression, identity crisis, all these things. But that same, I think, wave of emotion and experience is what drove me in tangent with my faith... Because my mom was always very spiritual and everything happens for a reason. I'm like, "What's the reason? Tell me why. Why did God make me go through this? I don't get it. It's very painful."
And now I get it. I had to go through that to build the grit and tenacity, to rebuild systems for people like me. It goes back to this very kind of cliche quote of like, "If not you, then who? And if not now, when?" That became my motto. Okay, if this current system does not apply to people like me, what system can? And if it doesn't exist, let me build it. I think right now, as I'm saying this out loud, it sounds easy, like, "Sure, okay, we'll just build it," but I think it took so many people in my ecosystem, from Sister Freeman who told me about this meeting with her son to her son who guided me to these resources, to my church community; to my husband; to my in-laws; to my mom; mentors, endless amounts of mentors; my mentor Jesse; my mentor Karen; my mentor, Stephanie. All these people that have invested in me and reminded me, you are enough even when they put you in that box of other people.
Because I think in that moment, it makes you feel like there's something wrong with you. People like you, you're othered. You're not like everyone else. And that was difficult to digest in the moment. So I think for me, I really took it to heart to try to build... And again, I built something. Is it perfect? No, but I tried, I built it's out there and we're fixing it every day. It's iterating every day in how we can make it better for people. Students right now who are in that situation are going through a very different thing that students were going through 10 years ago. How do we adapt? How do we adjust? So I think at the end of the day is that, right?
And I am a firm believer that God does put us on this earth and we each have a reason and a purpose, and to this point, I do a daily prayer to have God use me as a vessel for His work, whatever that may be. So it's like, what's the challenge today? Use my physical body, use my mind, use my access, whether that's like Stanford, my being bilingual, being able-bodied, how can I make a difference for people who are overlooked who these systems weren't built for?
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. And I want to talk in a moment about faith and then I want to transition into where Knight-Hennessy fit in all of this. I have to say, I think it's interesting that in the triptych from Rabbi Hillel that you quoted, which is, "If not you, who? If not now, when?" The third, which you didn't mention is, "If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?" And it strikes me that of the three, maybe that's the one that you have most exhibited to me in your journey is fighting against the odds for yourself and then creating a future for all these versions of you out there so that they maybe don't have to go through what you went through.
Let's talk for a second about faith, which I think is interesting because it's not something that we talk a lot about in Denning House. It's not something we talk a lot about in Silicon Valley. It's not something that statistically is trending in the right direction in the United States. Data show that fewer and fewer people are part of faith communities, fewer and fewer people, especially young people, find faith to be part of their daily practice. Can you say a little bit about what role faith has played in your life, what role religion has played in your life and how that's been a part of your journey?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Absolutely, and thank you so much for mentioning that. For me particularly, faith is a really big part of my life and that all starts with my mom. Growing up again with very little to no means, she didn't work, so we just kind of always lived with the sibling who had the newest baby and we're constantly moving. And despite of the scarcity, she always found a way to give and serve others, and she would always attribute this kind of sense of giving and serving others to her faith. So she's the first example that I would see on a daily basis on the example of what a person with faith is and does to practice what she preached, that was my mom.
As I got older and she left, I continued to try to find church communities for a certain extent, just because of the habit, it was a very nice community to be a part of. We'd read scriptures and we'd sing. I was always in choir, I was the Sunday school teacher. I really liked the community aspect and this idea of being in community with people with shared faith. And as I got older, I think there was a shift, and I'm not exactly sure where, at what point in my life where I detached from the religion aspect of it, to your point exactly of what is happening in the world and what are people associating people who are religious to social movements or lack thereof, and I shifted to leave the religion that I was a part of to create my own practices and relationship with God.
I read my scriptures daily. I worship with my children on Sundays in my own house. There's a church close to my house that on days that I feel like I want to go be in community with other people and hear the gospel, I will sit in on a Sunday. And I was actually having this conversation with a bishop not too long ago on how this work that I do now for farm workers on Sundays and the team that I've built at Dreamers Roadmap, that's to a certain extent become my church community, and Sundays in service of other people have become my worship Sundays. So again, I almost unintentionally reconstructed this system that puts people in a way in boxes and designed my own version of what feels comfortable for me.
I feel that religion has a lot of challenging aspects to it that I necessarily didn't agree with 100%. At the same time, I appreciate the autonomy that we have as individuals to do or not to do what we believe in or lack thereof. We can choose to believe or choose not to believe. So I feel for me, I'm in a very comfortable position where I still journal and I write letters to God in my journaling daily and my prayers, I ask for guidance and support and I still cry in my prayers every now and then like, "What does this mean? What's the lesson lend here?" So that I never lost, and I think for me, again, in coming the length that I've come, I attributed a lot to my faith because when you're left in a country on your own at 15, there's very little that you can hang onto. Very few people who you can solely depend on.
And I think for me and seeing my mom and doing her prayers and how devoted she was to her faith and to her God, I'm like, "That's the one person that will never leave me. That's the one person that will always hear me. That's the one being that will never judge me. Regardless of where I am in life, they're always there." And that's comforting because for someone who was constantly moving, instability was the normal, parents left so young, people like you, being othered, like the vision that comes to my mind is like this little person in like a maze and just keeps hitting all these dead ends, but there's always this little light even when I hit a dead end, and for me, that's God.
Eli Cahan:
I love that. That's so beautiful. I want to say out loud some of the things you've done, just so we can say it out loud, and I probably will butcher it and not give it enough credit, but I just want to mention three of the things that I'm aware of, and then I want to talk about where Knight-Hennessy fit in all of this, but just to say out loud. So one of the things that you've mentioned is the Dreamers Roadmap, which is an application that helps undocumented students find scholarships for college, basically exactly in a way replicating the structural barriers and inequalities that you faced and basically giving people a tool to deal with them. The second thing that I know you worked on, as you mentioned, is this rent campaign for essential workers. I think it raised around $3 million to support rent. We can round up. That's okay. You get credit. $2.7 million for essential workers during COVID, which is such a beautiful thing.
And then I know that the third that you've worked on is this Supplies for Farm Workers Initiative to try to, it sounds like, get people what they need and as humans are entitled to in terms of what farm workers who are an essential part of certainly California, where we're sitting now, as well as the US, can do their work with dignity and with the resources they need. So you do all of this and then someone says to you, "Well, you should apply to Rhodes," and because you can't do that practically in your life, there's a second choice, which is Knight-Hennessy. So you go to the backup, the plan B. And then I'm curious, when you got accepted into Knight-Hennessy, what did you expect you were going to get out of this beyond full tuition support, which obviously was essential in your situation and what in fact did you end up taking out of it? What do you recall in terms of the ways Knight-Hennessy added to an identity that at this point is so full of success and accomplishment despite the barriers and to a resume that is overflowing with accomplishment and achievement?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Thank you. And for the record, I don't know that Stanford was B or the option, just to put it out there. I think there were all three equivalently an option, Rhodes, Knight-Hennessy, and Fulbright.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Yeah, you hear that, John Hennessy? Yeah, you're listening. I know you're listening.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
By default, I think what made sense for my family and I at the time was here. And again, I go back to my faith. I prayed about it, this felt right. And again, with a lot of just fear and disbelief I applied and even the application... I don't know if you've heard this from other people. The application to a certain extent, and I don't know, this is maybe something that I have to talk to John and Tina about, I'm like, "Is the application like just that? That's all you need to know?" It felt too easy, too simple of a question, but I think that was the beauty of it. It was such a list of simple questions that made you really reflect and be very concise on what it is that you want, and I appreciated that.
I think when coming here, what did I expect? Honestly, I had no expectation. I had no idea what I was doing. I think that's the challenge of being the first in all of these things. You don't really know what the heck you're getting yourself into, it's just kind of like, okay, in God's name, here we go. And just jumping to the deep end and it's like, all right. So I think for me, just the first, I think, emotion that came when I was accepted was just immense gratitude. Fell down to my knees physically and just prayed to God, thanking Him for the opportunity to be here on a full ride. It's weird to express to people, Stanford is paying me to go there. What? That doesn't happen. But here I was. It was happening to me. And then the second thought was, what does this mean for my family? I have two young children, a 10-year-old and a soon-to-be six-year-old. And for them to see me in grad school and not just at any school, at Stanford. And again, the emotion again was gratitude and how this was going to impact my children.
And I recall, and one of the many visits that they did here on campus, we were just walking around somewhere down Main Quad or something, and my oldest says, "Oh, yeah, when I come to Stanford," just casually. I was like, "Wait, what?" And I almost held back and I got super emotional because I'm like, "Oh my goodness. Here you see this little Brown girl with her long braided hair in an institution that historically doesn't see many people like us, but because her mom goes here, she automatically already sees herself here." She's going to have to do the work to get in here. She knows that. But just the mere fact that she can think that this is a place where she can be, beyond words because I had never imagined that. I grew up in East Palo Alto, down the street. I lived there for almost 20 years. This was a place where we would come with family from Mexico to take pictures. Never did it occur to me I'm going to be a student there one day. I didn't feel like I was going to make it here.
Eli Cahan:
And what do you think you learned as a student here? How do you think Knight-Hennessy changed the way that you approach your work and see the world?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Well, I think Knight-Hennessy, because of the fact... And I think I do bring up the financial part, because I think... And I would tell John and Tina this all the time, "Thank you for paying for this. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be here." And I say that to say so many people that come from the communities that I come from don't see grad school as a possibility because of the financials. So one is just learning that, how the idea of one or two individuals with this vision of creating an inclusive community impacted my life and now my daughter's lives and then the seven generations after me. And then my time here is, one, learning that, what's the impact that it's going to make on myself and my children.
Two, the people that got accepted in my cohort, I feel that we're a very close cohort. You start your little WhatsApp chats and all the things and you start having interactions with folks. Finding the people in Knight-Hennessy was very instrumental for me, specifically the Christian kind of Tuesdays Bible study group. That became my little ecosystem of folks that I can go to because we shared a lot of identities and our faith, and in a place that, I think in the year that I was here, there was still a lot of identity stuff that I was struggling with. But within my cohort, I found phenomenal people. I found people who I want in my life for the rest of my life, super brilliant, kind people that I know will make an impact in the world, and just to call them friends makes all the impact and change for me.
And I think even beyond that, right now to the job that I have... I was actually talking to one of my friends, Hannah, during Thanksgiving and she's like, "Oh, do you think the Knight-Hennessy had an impact in you getting this job?" And I think in the moment I was like... I don't know, I think I got caught off guard, wasn't able to process right away. But after, as I was reflecting in my car on way home, I'm like, "Actually, it had everything to do with me getting this job." If I didn't have Knight-Hennessy, I wouldn't have done my master's here at Stanford. If I hadn't done my master's here at Stanford, I don't think that I would've been considered or looked as seriously to be considered for the job that I now have at Stanford. So yes, it had everything to do with me now being back on this campus as a staff member.
Eli Cahan:
And can you share a little bit about the job that you're doing now?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Sure. It's a mouthful. You ready? I'm the project manager for the Education Entrepreneurship Hub for the Stanford Accelerator for Learning at the Graduate School of Education.
Eli Cahan:
It's almost like you practice it.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
What does that mean?
Eli Cahan:
Yeah.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
So the Stanford Accelerator for Learning is this phenomenal initiative that we have going on at the Graduate School of Education, and my role specifically handles all of the student-facing activity, which I think for me was one of the most exciting parts about this job. My job is now to meet other wonderful students and alumni who have ideas to solve education using technology. What are the odds? What are the odds? To be in a position now, I feel extremely blessed to be in a place where I can be that mentor, that guidance, that support system to other students who want to make a difference in education, and what a world of a difference would it have made had I had someone like that or an institution like that or a program like that when I was starting. So it kind of, again, goes back to it. God makes no mistakes. Everything that had to happen happened. For me to be here today, this is where I'm today. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow, but this is where I'm at.
Eli Cahan:
And in a moment where the very sparse landscape of opportunities and resources that you navigated may be further gutted, the DACA program is certainly on the chopping block very much. The Department of Education is roiling with anticipated change and potential profound dismantling. The way that we structure education in this country and public education in the form we've known it for decades may be a thing in the past. How do you think about the work you're doing now in that context?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Okay, what I'm about to say is probably a little controversial, but I'm going to say it anyways. I think it should be dismantled. It hasn't worked for so many of us. I think there's two perspectives to look at this. Oh my goodness, this person destroying everything that we know. Oh my gosh. Yes, but I think we need it. I think we're at a point where we need to take advantage of the fact that all of this is crumbling. My fear, I will say, is that if the right people aren't in the room when we start to rebuild it, that's going to be the problem.
Eli Cahan:
Well, I think that's the key question, is dismantling and rebuilding.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Correct. So I think that's the challenging part here. How long will it take to dismantle and how long or how soon can we start rebuilding? Who will rebuild it? So I think for me, again, this is why it's so exciting even in the job that I'm in right now. We now have the power to create and rebuild systems to a certain extent of how we would want the educational system to work. What is that? What do you want to see? What would you like to see different? So I encourage students, everyone, students, alumni, Stanford, affiliates, none, anyone in the world, especially those who have been in the public education system here in the United States to take advantage of this opportunity and really find those spaces and places that will really back you up in building the solutions that you want to create.
But I think oftentimes, and even in my short time in philanthropy, there's this really big misconception of like, oh, when you have this power and you have this say of funding and investing, and whatever, creating all these things, you very rarely go to the people on the ground who've experienced the system. It's like, oh, well, it's this fancy person with the fancy degree who's been dissociated for the past 15 years and that's who's going to create it. No, it needs to be a combination of the two. Yes, the researcher with the fancy degree and title in collaboration with people on the ground, in the community who have experienced the ramifications of the broken systems and how do we collectively then start to rebuild a new system that works specifically for these lower income communities, because that's who's been left behind. I think we oftentimes hear, "Oh, the system is broken. It doesn't work." It's not broken. It's working exactly how it was designed to work and for who it was designed to see succeed. It's not broken.
Eli Cahan:
Well, it gives me a lot of, shall we say, cautious optimism that if we are going to go through a time of tremendous change, necessary change, but difficult nonetheless, that people like you hopefully will be at that table, and if, as you say, Knight-Hennessy made you imagine a possibility where you could be at that table and has practically given you the means now to have those conversations with undergrads and occupy a role where you can be at that table, I think that that is a blessing for all of us who hope to have families who are going to be educated in this country. And I want to move to sort of our popcorn segment, our last segment here, just to highlight some of your major experiences in Knight-Hennessy. The first segment here, the first question we have is, who was your favorite King Global Leadership Series speaker? Is there a speaker who came in during your time with Knight-Hennessy who sticks out in your mind as particularly influential?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
I don't know if this was part of that series, but someone that I was really happy to see was Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. As someone who's considering to run for office one day, to meet her and how long she was there, and she did it at a time where she was a mother and women were rarely in these positions of power, was very inspiring. I think that that's one of the neat things, Knight-Hennessy does expose you to these people who you kind of only see on TV or read about on the news, and she was very sweet. We spoke to her after, took selfies with her, of course. So that was really fun. But that was inspiring. That was inspiring to see real life she rose in the room and to be like, "I can be that one day." That was pretty cool.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. What was your favorite Knight-Hennessy trip?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Oh, hands down, Japan. Sorry to everyone who didn't get to go.
Eli Cahan:
I know. I know. All of us have FOMO for this. This is in Knight-Hennessy lore. Yeah, can you share a little bit about the Japan trip? How much sushi you ate. Yeah, I know.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Well, first, I just want to thank Tomo for... Shout out Tomo. Love you, fam. ... for just pitching it to Knight-Hennessy. It wasn't part of the [inaudible 00:41:26] of places. He was like, "Well, I'm from there. I'm about to graduate. I have some connections here and there." Super humble. We met governors of every single city that we were there with. Along with Professor Kiyoteru, who was also amazing. And yeah, I think just them two leading it was phenomenal. The chemistry was unparalleled. They were hilarious, but also extremely knowledgeable. So of course it was fun, but it was also extremely informative, which I really appreciated. The food, exquisite. Yes, every day we were super spoiled with the best food. The people, super friendly. And I think even our group, it was a beautiful mixture of different classes, which was really nice. I had never met many of them, and I think from our cohort, there was probably two or three people, but even then I hadn't really had the time to have quality time with them and have meaningful conversation with them.
So that was really nice to be able... And for me, I was like, "Oh my gosh, why is this happening at the end? This should have happened in the beginning." So maybe that's putting a pin on that for KH to consider making these trips sooner rather than later because I made such amazing friendships and more deep and meaningful friendships during this trip. And as soon as I came back, I graduated, so we kind of all went off our own ways. But it would've been so nice to be able to still be in community with a lot of these folks. And I still see them here and there on campus now that I'm back. But just, yeah, what an experience. Thank you, Tomo, for pitching that.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. And I think the Japan trip is an apocryphal trip both because so many of us have deep aspiration to get to Japan, and so a lot of jealousy for those of you who went. I think it's a good example also of so much of the Knight-Hennessy ethos, which is we have a whole series of events which are called Scholar-Driven Events where basically so much of the spirit of the program is creating programming initiatives, extracurriculars, trips in your vision, and the staff are so flexible and creative in terms of thinking about how to support you. And this was the first scholar-directed trip, but I know... Not to play my cards here, but I know there are some of us who are thinking about, "Well, what's that fabulous place I've always wanted to go, and can I use this as an alibi to get there?"
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
If you have the connections.
Eli Cahan:
Exactly, exactly. Or if you can just nudge someone who does have the connections and tell you-
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
There you go. You need a partner in crime and-
Eli Cahan:
Exactly. I'll carry your bags. Okay. And what is your favorite Denning House snack?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
It was the overnight oats in the fridge. Those were pretty good.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, I had to say there were three of them up there when I left. I didn't take one, but I've been thinking about it. Yeah, if there's one left, this is going to be really awkward. Okay. Amazing. Yes, the overnight oats. Exactly. We'll fight in the octagon. If you had to pick one scholar from your cohort to get stranded on a desert island with, or it could be from another cohort too, who would it be and why?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Man, [inaudible 00:44:30] spontaneous questions. And I don't know, maybe because this is all so fresh and Japan was, again, still a dream that I dream about. It would probably be Tomo. Why? He's hella funny. Karaoke was epic. He's brilliant, and I think we'd have really cool conversations. We wouldn't get bored.
Eli Cahan:
That's a huge part of being on a desert island, not wanting to murder the other person. Get a lot of time to kill. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how well the karaoke will work without electricity, but that's on you guys. And last question. What advice do you have for prospective scholars and future applicants to Knight-Hennessy?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
It's advice that I think I needed to hear and give myself more too when I was considering applying and when I eventually decided to: Believe in yourself. You're a great person. People believe in you. When you doubt yourself, tap somebody on their shoulder, "Hey, why should I be applying to this?" I love the fun facts question and reaching out to people. I'm like, "What fun facts. What is fun about me?" I couldn't think about it. It's like, okay, let me phone a friend. So what is a fun fact about me? There's so many people in your life who see you from a different perspective, something that you oftentimes don't see because you're so used to seeing it in yourself. So capitalizing. Don't be afraid. And not just because of the application. I think we need to have a little jar of amazing things you've done type of thing, but if you don't have a physical jar, call your friends. They'll tell you how great you are. Call your mentors. They'll make you feel good.
Eli Cahan:
If you are not for yourself, who will be for you?
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Amen to that.
Eli Cahan:
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, thank you so much for joining us on Imagine A World Alumni Edition. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in, and this was such an amazing conversation.
Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca:
Thank you so much for having me. It was a treat to be with you.
Willie Thompson:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine A World, the alumni version, where we hear from inspiring graduates of the Knight-Hennessy community who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see. This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program, providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Please follow us on social media @KnightHennessy and visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.
