Meet Dulce Matuz

Dulce Matuz, voted one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, will be speaking at Palo Alto College on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 10 a.m. in the Performing Arts Center.  Admission is free.

Matuz, an undocumented Latina who was faced legal challenges as she put herself through college, is an advocate for immigration and president of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, a youth-based and youth-led organization dedicated to fighting for higher education and immigrant rights.

Born in Mexico, Matuz immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15 as an undocumented student.  Her legal status created numerous educational challenges like applying to college without a social security number.  After being accepted, Matuz was faced with the effects of Arizona Proposition 300, which required undocumented youth to pay out-of-state tuition and made them ineligible for merit-based public scholarships.

Though confronted with adversity, Matuz graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering but was unable to find employment without documented citizenship.  In 2011, the real estate license she had used to financially support her education was not renewed because of new laws requiring a driver's license.

Matuz has been recognized numerous times for her activism.  In addition to the Time Magazine list, she has been named one of the "40 Hispanic Leaders under 40" by Latino Perspectives Magazine and received the Stylos Award Activist of the Year and the National Lorraine Lee Latina Leadership Award by Hispanic Women's Corporation.

For more information, call the Office of Student Engagement and Retention at 486-3125.