Her Story
About Valentina
I've been involved in nonprofit work since I was young, starting when I was around 2014-2015 when one of my mom's friends started a nonprofit specifically for kids in Venezuela with cancer, helping them get resources and fundraising. Around 2016, when the situation in Venezuela got even worse, the organization turned into a more broad nonprofit, sending money, food, medication, and clothes - all simple things they weren't able to get. That organization is still going, though I was definitely more involved when I was younger. Now I do my own school organization here at my college at Texas State called Move Texas at Texas State. We're a voter registration organization, and since we're a school chapter, we can advocate for things that our members are interested in, so we tend to fight for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration rights, things like that. We've been able to organize protests, student-led protests, MLK Day protests, Pride events, and we've hosted James Talarico before. I was the founder for that chapter at Texas State, which was created in 2025, just a year and a half ago, and I serve as vice president. In my day-to-day, I get up pretty early, go to class, and I'm usually all day emailing or texting my other eBoard members about event planning and communication with my team. I also work at this place called Tax-Free Shopping, where we help international customers get their sales tax back - I've been at that job for 3 years now. I graduate in like 2 weeks with my major in Political Science and my minor in International Studies.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Valentina
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
It sounds cliche, but I think I would say just do what you want. If you set your mind to something, just do it. I think I used to stress myself out about events and things - I'd look at them and be like, I just don't understand how these people put this together, how did they even start, what did they look up, who did they call? But honestly, it's not that hard if you just Google things. And honestly, there are very easy ways, especially how advanced technology is, that the internet can tell you how things are done. So I think people stress themselves out too much thinking about the logistics of something, but honestly, it might just be better to jump in and see what happens. I overthink a lot too, but you just have to go for it.
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