Alejandra Campoverdi is a nationally recognized women’s health advocate, bestselling author, founder, producer, and former White House aide to President Obama. We are pleased to have her discuss her work and journey to healing. Alejandra will attend virtually. Attendees are welcome to join from home via Zoom or to attend in-person at the Capitola Branch Library. The discussion will be moderated by Geneffa Jahan, Cabrillo College English Department.

Alejandra's award-winning memoir, FIRST GEN, is an unflinching memoir about navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina. FIRST GEN is both a riveting personal story and a broad examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer.

Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member’s girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She’s ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She’s been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you’re a “First and Only.” It also comes at a price. 

With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Foregoing the tidy bullet points of her resume and shining a light on the spaces between them instead, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. In this timely and revealing reflection, Alejandra draws from her own experiences to name and frame the challenges First and Onlys often face, illuminating a road to truth, healing, and change in the process.
 
Part memoir, part manifesto, FIRST GEN is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging - a gripping journey to “reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive.”

Alejandra holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and graduated cum laude from USC. She currently serves on the boards of the California Community Foundation and Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, and is a Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.