Erica Fernandez was born and raised in a small, humble town in Michoacán, Mexico and lived there until she was ten years old. She is the fifth of six children and in Mexico, worked alongside her siblings in the fields while attending school in the afternoon. After being separated from her parents and older siblings for a year, she was reunited with them in Oxnard, CA when she was eight years old, along with her 13 year-old sister, and four-year-old sister. As a migrant student, Ms. Fernandez took advantage of all the opportunities offered to her, from Saturday school to summer school migrant programs. During her time in Oxnard, she constantly sought to give back to both her school and community. Her academic achievement and community involvement opened many doors.
She benefitted from participation in a critical community outreach effort since 2002 where she found her voice and passion. With the help of many courageous environmental leaders and mentors, her environmental activism began by focusing on issues of environmental racism that were adversely impacting the large population of Mexican immigrant farmworkers in her community. Agricultural fields surrounding that community are still laced with pesticides, a towering power plant sits on the beach, and a toxic superfund site exists less than half mile away, polluting the last remaining natural wetlands in Southern California. At that time, a multibillion-dollar mining corporation, BHP Billiton, had proposed a Liquefied Natural Gas facility fourteen miles off the coastline, near the community of Oxnard. Traditionally, Mexican women are not encouraged to speak up, but she decided that protecting our environment was a responsibility she needed to take; fortunately, this ended up being a personal catalyst for change in her life. To address this objective, she became very involved in outreach, education and activism after joining the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and was trained to be a community organizer when she was just twelve years old. Ms. Fernandez and her community waged a four-year battle that included educating, informing, organizing, and training thousands of people. After a long fight, they accomplished the impossible: they defeated a mining corporation through the political process concluding with the governor’s veto and a bill in state legislature. At the end of this battle, she represented youth by providing testimony in the main hearings and mobilizing people to take action. This long struggle at a young age gave her the voice that she never thought she could have and allowed her to dream of greater things.
Ms. Fernandez is the recipient of numerous awards before and after graduating high school, among them the Brower Youth Award, the Gates Millennium Scholarship, and Glamour 2011 Top 10 College Women Award. She graduated high school and college with Honors.
Ms. Fernandez continued to serve her community while attending college. She has spoken to thousands of people both domestically and internationally on issues she deeply cares about, such as environmental justice and education. She graduated from Stanford University with two Bachelor’s degrees, Urban Studies with a concentration on Urban Society and Social Change and Iberian and Latin American Cultures. She also completed her Education Master’s degree in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies at Stanford. She is currently a John Gardner Fellow and is working at the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights.
Her determination and continuous hard work have taken Ms. Fernandez to places she never thought were possible. She believes that if you really want something to happen, you need to act and make it happen.