Latest news with #Afro-Latina
Elle
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
How SZA, Ariana Grande, and a ‘Formative' Experience on Broadway Inspired Natalie Gurrero's Debut Novel
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Spoilers below. Natalie Guerrero didn't intend to write a New York story. Her initial plan for her captivating and charming debut novel, My Train Leaves at Three, was to set it in California, where she had recently moved, and use her evocative new surroundings to explore power dynamics in the workplace. But, as she drafted, something about that concept wasn't working as Guerrero had hoped. So she turned to an exercise popularized by Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: waking up each morning to write three pages of stream-of-consciousness in longhand. 'The 'morning pages' work,' the New York native tells me from her sunny Los Angeles abode. 'I know it sounds very woo-woo, but the book revealed itself to me. I did a free-write one morning, and the first few lines I wrote were, 'I was supposed to have a poodle and a pool, but my sister's dead and my hair is still frizzy.' All of that just came out. I thought to myself, 'Oh. This [book] is about grief and sisterhood.'' Soon, Guerrero had re-positioned her main character, Xiomara Sanchez—a gifted Afro-Latina singer in her late 20s who dreams of performing on Broadway—in Manhattan's uptown neighborhood of Washington Heights. 'I was so happy that it landed there,' she says. The novel—out today—follows Xiomara as she grieves the tragic loss of her older sister, Nena, while also trying to kickstart her budding theater career. Her journey to self-actualization is complicated by monotonous odd jobs, a thorny relationship with her mother, and predatory dynamics with older men. (Oh, and she must also navigate her Saturn Return.) Below, Guerrero sits down with to discuss the sprawling themes behind My Train Leaves at Three; the childhood connection to Broadway that inspired the story; and the forthcoming feature adaptation that's currently in the works. My older sister and I are 11 months apart, and she's someone whom I couldn't ever imagine losing. She often jokes that this book is like a eulogy and love letter to her. Sisterhood in all its forms is important to me. I thought about the worst thing that could happen that would make someone lose their voice and sense of self, and that was losing a sister. I also grew up in a house where my mom experienced sibling loss when she was pregnant with me, so I always felt called to the topic. That kind of experience forms grief over generations, and I grew up around that energy. So once those themes came out on the page that morning with my free-write, I decided to go in that direction. Oh, I had such a hard Saturn Return. And that's probably the L.A. part of me that snuck its way into the book. I do think when you say 'Saturn Return' to women who are in our age range, it's a vocabulary we can all relate to. I was in mine when I started writing, and I just kept thinking, 'When is this gonna end? This is really hard.' I went through a big heartbreak, moved across the country, had an intense job, and was stressed about finances. Everything that could happen during a Saturn Return was happening to me. But then I started having a lot of conversations with my white friends about it, and I felt like there weren't many opportunities to talk to Black girls about this woo-woo thing. The stark difference I notice between my white friends and my Black or Latina friends is that most of my Black girlfriends aren't as self-indulgent. I thought Xiomara deserved to indulge in the wild world of getting to know herself—something we really don't often get to do. And it's something I feel committed to doing in my own life. But it's quite an American thing. My dad's Dominican, and my mom's Puerto Rican. I didn't grow up seeing Black or Latin women asking themselves about themselves, so the Saturn Return was a wonderful way to get there. I'm gonna go way back for a second. I was a child actor, and I played Young Nala in The Lion King on Broadway. It was a really gratifying and formative experience, but it was also incredibly traumatic. I don't talk about it a lot, but I usually like to say that it was the first place I learned that women 'shouldn't' be bigger than men. I was constantly scrutinized for how tall I was getting. Mind you, I was 12. And I'm 5'4 today. But everyone kept saying to me [at the time], 'You're getting too tall, and your contract's not going to get renewed. You can't be taller than Simba.' It was so horrifying to me, and I would look in the mirror and try to be smaller. After I finished acting and put that chapter aside, I worked at WME in the books department, then came out to L.A. and worked for a production company. And the common denominator in those spaces was that there were men who I felt were smaller than me who were allowed to take up so much more space than I was. Manny's power looms over Xiomara in such a horrific way. He deliberately uses his power to get what he wants. But then I also think it's a commentary on the line of consent when you're talking about someone who has so much more power. A lot of their relationship was consensual, and also, there's a gray area of how much of it was a transaction. I always had two non-negotiables when I was selling the book: Xiomara is Black, and she's also never getting the part. Those were two things that I was never going to change. So much of Broadway had been tainted for me because of my experience and my growing pains away from it. I distanced myself for so long, but it's my first love, so I was excited to write about it. I can dissect so much of this book, and it can be a little heady, but with this, I was like, 'She's grieving her sister, having horrible sex, and getting assaulted. Let's give her a voice. Let's let her have some fun.' I also loved the playlist that I listened to while I was writing, and being able to dive into what songs she might sing. I genuinely believe that people who hate musical theater haven't seen the right musical. You have to inherently believe in hope and storytelling to love musical theater. A lot of musical theater like the Songs for a New World soundtrack. I was also listening to Olivia Dean and SZA. SZA is such a storyteller. I was listening to her on repeat because she really captures that angst that Xiomara was feeling. Then there was a lot of Latin music, like Elvis Crespo and Juan Luis Guerra, and the classics: bachata, merengue, and salsa. Oh, 100 percent. That and Ariana Grande's 'Saturn Returns Interlude.' Harmony, not balance, babe. [Laughs.] But no, there are some days when I'm not promoting the book at all because I'm at this amazing writers' residency and I want to give those writers my full attention. I'm also working on my second book right now. I'm still figuring out where I need to pour into myself so that I can have the energy to pour out. I'm definitely a writer who can get into that mode of like, 'I didn't write today. What am I doing?' That 'grind' work ethic has really gotten into me, so I'm trying to get out of that. But I'm committed to being in community with other writers, and it's something that my day job has allowed me, and I want to continue to do that. She's amazing. She's one of those Black writers from the generation before me who helped hold the door open. Jenifer Lewis is another one. I worked with her on her essay collection, Walking in My Joy. I've found mentors in Mara, Jenifer, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who I worked for when she was at WME. I think mentorship is so important. I do look at it that way. I definitely don't want this cycle to end with me. And I'm just getting started, so by no means am I on the top of the mountain. But I would really like to help other people while simultaneously growing with them, too. It's a little too early. I haven't even given it to my editor yet, but please stay tuned! I can share, though, that I'm now starting to adapt My Train Leaves at Three for film, and I'm really excited. Thank you! I'm adapting the feature script, and I just started writing act 1. I'll be working with Dominican filmmaker Gabriella Ortega. In deciding who to collaborate with, it was important to me to work with another amazing Dominican voice to bring Xiomara's story to life. We're circling a few high-level producers who I can't name just yet, but it's going to be indie, gritty, raw, sexy, and fun. All the things! This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
New Straits Times
11-07-2025
- Science
- New Straits Times
Addressing AI bias: The push for more women, minorities in tech
As an Afro-Latina woman with degrees in computer and electrical engineering, Maya De Los Santos hopes to buck a trend by forging a career in artificial intelligence (AI), a field dominated by white men. AI needs her, say experts and observers. Built-in viewpoints and bias, unintentionally imbued by its creators, can make the fast-growing digital tool risky as it is used to make significant decisions in areas such as hiring processes, healthcare, finance and law enforcement, they warn. "I'm interested in a career in AI because I want to ensure that marginalised communities are protected from and informed on the dangers and risks of AI and also understand how they can benefit from it," said De Los Santos, a first-generation United States college student. "This unfairness and prejudice that exists in society is being replicated in the AI brought into very high stakes scenarios and environment, and it's being trusted, without more critical thinking." Women represent 26 per cent of the AI workforce, according to a Unesco report, and men hold 80 per cent of tenured faculty positions at university AI departments globally. Blacks and Hispanics also are underrepresented in the AI workforce, a 2022 census data analysis by Georgetown University showed. Among AI technical occupations, Hispanics held about nine per cent of jobs, compared with holding more than 18 per cent of US jobs overall, it said. Black workers held about eight per cent of the technical AI jobs, compared with holding nearly 12 per cent of US jobs overall, it said. De Los Santos will soon begin a PhD programme in human computer interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She wants to learn not only how to educate marginalised communities on AI technology but to understand privacy issues and AI bias, also called algorithm or machine learning bias, that produces results that reflect and perpetuate societal biases. Bias has unintentionally seeped into some AI systems as software engineers, for example, who are creating problem-solving techniques integrate their own perspectives and often-limited data sets. scrapped an AI recruiting tool when it found it was selecting resumes favouring men over women. The system had been trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, a reflection of a preponderance of men across the industry, and the system in effect taught itself that male candidates were preferable. "When people from a broader range of life experiences, identities and backgrounds help shape AI, they're more likely to identify different needs, ask different questions and apply AI in new ways," said Tess Posner, founding chief executive officer of AI4ALL, a non-profit working to develop an inclusive pipeline of AI professionals. "Inclusion makes the solutions created by AI more relevant to more people," said Posner. AI4ALL counts De Los Santos as one of the 7,500 students it has helped navigate the barriers to getting a job in AI since 2015. By targeting historically underrepresented groups, the non-profit aims to diversify the AI workforce. AI engineer jobs are one of the fastest growing positions globally and the fastest growing overall in the US and the United Kingdom, according to LinkedIn. Posner said promoting diversity means starting early in education by expanding access to computer science classes for children. About 60 per cent of public high schools offer such classes with Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans less likely to have access. Ensuring that students from underrepresented groups know about AI as a potential career, creating internships and aligning them with mentors is critical, she said. Efforts to make AI more representative of American society are colliding with President Donald Trump's backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programmes. DEI offices and programmes in the US government have been terminated and federal contractors banned from using affirmative action in hiring. Safiya Noble, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles and founder of the Centre on Resilience & Digital Justice, said she worries the government's attack on DEI will undermine efforts to create opportunities in AI for marginalised groups. "One of the ways to repress any type of progress on civil rights is to make the allegation that tech and social media companies have been too available to the messages of civil rights and human rights," said Noble.
The Star
11-07-2025
- Science
- The Star
Tech's diversity crisis is baking bias into AI systems
CHICAGO: As an Afro-Latina woman with degrees in computer and electrical engineering, Maya De Los Santos hopes to buck a trend by forging a career in AI, a field dominated by white men. AI needs her, experts and observers say. Built-in viewpoints and bias, unintentionally imbued by its creators, can make the fast-growing digital tool risky as it is used to make significant decisions in areas such as hiring processes, health care, finance and law enforcement, they warn. "I'm interested in a career in AI because I want to ensure that marginalised communities are protected from and informed on the dangers and risks of AI and also understand how they can benefit from it," said De Los Santos, a first-generation US college student. "This unfairness and prejudice that exists in society is being replicated in the AI brought into very high stakes scenarios and environment, and it's being trusted, without more critical thinking." Women represent 26% of the AI workforce, according to a UNESCO report, and men hold 80% of tenured faculty positions at university AI departments globally. Blacks and Hispanics also are underrepresented in the AI workforce, a 2022 census data analysis by Georgetown University showed. Among AI technical occupations, Hispanics held about 9% of jobs, compared with holding more than 18% of US jobs overall, it said. Black workers held about 8% of the technical AI jobs, compared with holding nearly 12% of US jobs overall, it said. AI bias De Los Santos will soon begin a PhD programme in human computer interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She said she wants to learn not only how to educate marginalised communities on AI technology but to understand privacy issues and AI bias, also called algorithm or machine learning bias, that produces results that reflect and perpetuate societal biases. Bias has unintentionally seeped into some AI systems as software engineers, for example, who are creating problem-solving techniques integrate their own perspectives and often-limited data sets. scrapped an AI recruiting tool when it found it was selecting resumes favouring men over women. The system had been trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, a reflection of a preponderance of men across the industry, and the system in effect taught itself that male candidates were preferable. "When people from a broader range of life experiences, identities and backgrounds help shape AI, they're more likely to identify different needs, ask different questions and apply AI in new ways," said Tess Posner, founding CEO of AI4ALL, a non-profit working to develop an inclusive pipeline of AI professionals. "Inclusion makes the solutions created by AI more relevant to more people," said Posner. Promoting diversity AI4ALL counts De Los Santos as one of the 7,500 students it has helped navigate the barriers to getting a job in AI since 2015. By targeting historically underrepresented groups, the non-profit aims to diversify the AI workforce. AI engineer jobs are one of the fastest growing positions globally and the fastest growing overall in the US and the United Kingdom, according to LinkedIn. Posner said promoting diversity means starting early in education by expanding access to computer science classes for children. About 60% of public high schools offer such classes with Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans less likely to have access. Ensuring that students from underrepresented groups know about AI as a potential career, creating internships and aligning them with mentors is critical, she said, Efforts to make AI more representative of American society are colliding with President Donald Trump's backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, higher education and corporate levels. DEI offices and programmes in the US government have been terminated and federal contractors banned from using affirmative action in hiring. Companies from Goldman Sachs to PepsiCo have halted or cut back diversity programmes. Safiya Noble, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles and founder of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, said she worries the government's attack on DEI will undermine efforts to create opportunities in AI for marginalised groups. "One of the ways to repress any type of progress on civil rights is to make the allegation that tech and social media companies have been too available to the messages of civil rights and human rights," said Noble. "You see the evidence with their backlash against movements like Black Lives Matter and allegations of anti-conservative bias," she said. Globally, from 2021 to 2024, UNESCO says the number of women working in AI increased by just 4 percent. While progress may be slow, Posner said she is optimistic. "There's been a lot of commitment to these values of inclusion,' she said. "I don't think that's changed, even if as a society, we are wrestling with what inclusion really means and how to do that across the board." – Thomson Reuters Foundation
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Tech's diversity crisis is baking bias into AI systems
As an Afro-Latina woman with degrees in computer and electrical engineering, Maya De Los Santos hopes to buck a trend by forging a career in AI, a field dominated by white needs her, experts and observers viewpoints and bias, unintentionally imbued by its creators, can make the fast-growing digital tool risky as it is used to make significant decisions in areas such as hiring processes, health care, finance and law enforcement, they warn."I'm interested in a career in AI because I want to ensure that marginalized communities are protected from and informed on the dangers and risks of AI and also understand how they can benefit from it," said De Los Santos, a first-generation U.S. college student."This unfairness and prejudice that exists in society is being replicated in the AI brought into very high stakes scenarios and environment, and it's being trusted, without more critical thinking."Women represent 26% of the AI workforce, according to a UNESCO report, and men hold 80% of tenured faculty positions at university AI departments and Hispanics also are underrepresented in the AI workforce, a 2022 census data analysis by Georgetown University AI technical occupations, Hispanics held about 9% of jobs, compared with holding more than 18% of U.S. jobs overall, it said. Black workers held about 8% of the technical AI jobs, compared with holding nearly 12% of U.S. jobs overall, it Los Santos will soon begin a PhD program in human computer interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode said she wants to learn not only how to educate marginalized communities on AI technology but to understand privacy issues and AI bias, also called algorithm or machine learning bias, that produces results that reflect and perpetuate societal has unintentionally seeped into some AI systems as software engineers, for example, who are creating problem-solving techniques integrate their own perspectives and often-limited data scrapped an AI recruiting tool when it found it was selecting resumes favoring men over women. The system had been trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year came from men, a reflection of a preponderance of men across the industry, and the system in effect taught itself that male candidates were preferable."When people from a broader range of life experiences, identities and backgrounds help shape AI, they're more likely to identify different needs, ask different questions and apply AI in new ways," said Tess Posner, founding CEO of AI4ALL, a non-profit working to develop an inclusive pipeline of AI professionals."Inclusion makes the solutions created by AI more relevant to more people," said Posner. PROMOTING DIVERSITYAI4ALL counts De Los Santos as one of the 7,500 students it has helped navigate the barriers to getting a job in AI since targeting historically underrepresented groups, the non-profit aims to diversify the AI engineer jobs are one of the fastest growing positions globally and the fastest growing overall in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to said promoting diversity means starting early in education by expanding access to computer science classes for 60% of public high schools offer such classes with Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans less likely to have that students from underrepresented groups know about AI as a potential career, creating internships and aligning them with mentors is critical, she said,Efforts to make AI more representative of American society are colliding with President Donald Trump's backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, higher education and corporate offices and programs in the U.S. government have been terminated and federal contractors banned from using affirmative action in hiring. Companies from Goldman Sachs to PepsiCo have halted or cut back diversity Noble, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles and founder of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, said she worries the government's attack on DEI will undermine efforts to create opportunities in AI for marginalized groups."One of the ways to repress any type of progress on civil rights is to make the allegation that tech and social media companies have been too available to the messages of civil rights and human rights," said Noble."You see the evidence with their backlash against movements like Blacks Lives Matter and allegations of anti-conservative bias," she from 2021 to 2024, UNESCO says the number of women working in AI increased by just 4 progress may be slow, Posner said she is optimistic."There's been a lot of commitment to these values of inclusion," she said."I don't think that's changed, even if as a society, we are wrestling with what inclusion really means and how to do that across the board."
Economic Times
10-07-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
Tech's diversity crisis is baking bias into AI systems
ETtech As an Afro-Latina woman with degrees in computer and electrical engineering, Maya De Los Santos hopes to buck a trend by forging a career in AI, a field dominated by white men. AI needs her, experts and observers say. Built-in viewpoints and bias, unintentionally imbued by its creators, can make the fast-growing digital tool risky as it is used to make significant decisions in areas such as hiring processes, health care, finance and law enforcement, they warn. "I'm interested in a career in AI because I want to ensure that marginalized communities are protected from and informed on the dangers and risks of AI and also understand how they can benefit from it," said De Los Santos, a first-generation U.S. college student. "This unfairness and prejudice that exists in society is being replicated in the AI brought into very high stakes scenarios and environment, and it's being trusted, without more critical thinking." Women represent 26% of the AI workforce, according to a UNESCO report, and men hold 80% of tenured faculty positions at university AI departments globally. Blacks and Hispanics also are underrepresented in the AI workforce, a 2022 census data analysis by Georgetown University showed. Among AI technical occupations, Hispanics held about 9% of jobs, compared with holding more than 18% of U.S. jobs overall, it said. Black workers held about 8% of the technical AI jobs, compared with holding nearly 12% of U.S. jobs overall, it said. AI bias De Los Santos will soon begin a PhD program in human computer interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She said she wants to learn not only how to educate marginalized communities on AI technology but to understand privacy issues and AI bias, also called algorithm or machine learning bias, that produces results that reflect and perpetuate societal biases. Bias has unintentionally seeped into some AI systems as software engineers, for example, who are creating problem-solving techniques integrate their own perspectives and often-limited data sets. scrapped an AI recruiting tool when it found it was selecting resumes favoring men over women. The system had been trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, a reflection of a preponderance of men across the industry, and the system in effect taught itself that male candidates were preferable. "When people from a broader range of life experiences, identities and backgrounds help shape AI, they're more likely to identify different needs, ask different questions and apply AI in new ways," said Tess Posner, founding CEO of AI4ALL, a non-profit working to develop an inclusive pipeline of AI professionals. "Inclusion makes the solutions created by AI more relevant to more people," said Posner. PROMOTING DIVERSITY AI4ALL counts De Los Santos as one of the 7,500 students it has helped navigate the barriers to getting a job in AI since 2015. By targeting historically underrepresented groups, the non-profit aims to diversify the AI workforce. AI engineer jobs are one of the fastest growing positions globally and the fastest growing overall in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to LinkedIn. Posner said promoting diversity means starting early in education by expanding access to computer science classes for children. About 60% of public high schools offer such classes with Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans less likely to have access. Ensuring that students from underrepresented groups know about AI as a potential career, creating internships and aligning them with mentors is critical, she said, Efforts to make AI more representative of American society are colliding with President Donald Trump's backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, higher education and corporate levels. DEI offices and programs in the U.S. government have been terminated and federal contractors banned from using affirmative action in hiring. Companies from Goldman Sachs to PepsiCo have halted or cut back diversity programs. Safiya Noble, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles and founder of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, said she worries the government's attack on DEI will undermine efforts to create opportunities in AI for marginalized groups. "One of the ways to repress any type of progress on civil rights is to make the allegation that tech and social media companies have been too available to the messages of civil rights and human rights," said Noble. "You see the evidence with their backlash against movements like Blacks Lives Matter and allegations of anti-conservative bias," she said. Globally, from 2021 to 2024, UNESCO says the number of women working in AI increased by just 4 percent. While progress may be slow, Posner said she is optimistic. "There's been a lot of commitment to these values of inclusion," she said. "I don't think that's changed, even if as a society, we are wrestling with what inclusion really means and how to do that across the board." Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Markets need to see more than profits from Oyo Can Grasim's anti-competition charge against Asian Paints stand amid intense war Engine fuel switches or something else? One month on, still no word on what crashed AI 171 Delhivery survived the Meesho curveball. Can it keep on delivering profits? Stock Radar: Page Industries breaks out from Cup & Handle formation; stock hits fresh 52-week high For risk-takers with ability to stay invested for the long term: 5 small-caps from different sectors with upside potential of 5 to 32% Multibagger or IBC - Part 14: This auto ancillary with double-digit net margins is now getting EV-focused These mid-cap stocks with 'Strong Buy' & 'Buy' recos can rally over 25%, according to analysts
