Thesis Title: Shifting Visions: The Generic and Gender Legacy of the Female Outlaw in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise

What Now: Creative Executive, Orion Pictures

What Next: Hopefully bringing stories of brave women and marginalized voices to more screens around the world. 

Follow Me: @panchimami (Instagram)

I've been telling stories since I could pull a sentence together and haven't quite stopped since then. Naturally, when I found out I could read, watch, and listen to them as my concentration, there was no going back.

Academically, Hist & Lit engraved in me the importance of our individual footprint on our culture. I got to study seemingly the smallest of films and learn about people who are relegated to the footnotes of our history books at the same time as I was learning about their work in the context of revolutions and massive changes in our history as a nation. My role now working with filmmakers is much of the same work I learned from my professors and peers in Hist & Lit as they worked to exhume these truths as historians.

More importantly, every time I was able to learn the story of someone new through my studies it broadened my empathy as well. I was recently at a rally organized by a coalition of Jewish groups protesting family separations at the US/Mexico border and one of the leaders called for us to "allow our hearts to break" to be able to feel for those suffering in our country and around the world. I had my heart broken many times during my studies in courses like Sarah Lewis's "Vision & Justice" and Steve Biel's "Vietnam War in American Culture" so I could carve more room to carry and continue to tell other people's stories. That's why I think my education in Hist & Lit was not just an academic but a moral one as well that will hopefully always impact my work.