Kassandra Colón

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		Kassandra “Kassie” Colón is a grassroots leader from Sunrise, Florida who graduated from West Virginia University in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Geography. A 2019 Truman Scholar, their work emphasizes the importance of cultivating social justice in education, focusing specifically on cultural representation in the K-12 classroom. In 2018, Kassie founded Project La Resolana, a grassroots organization that matches students with representative literature as a medium for challenging dominant perspectives in education. Involved in Policy Debate since high school, they believe in the power of ideas to transform our world. Kassie is a Community Fellow at The Center for Resilient Communities and a Research Scholar at the Ronin Institute. They also serve as an Assistant Policy Debate Coach for WVU’s nationally competitive debate team, where they teach undergraduates the foundations of argumentation and advocacy. As a Puerto Rican and Mexican-American scholar, Kassie’s continued work focuses on bridging Puerto Rican/Chicano/Latinx studies and a practice-oriented approach to knowledge construction and dissemination. In the future, Kassie plans on pursuing a Ph.D., where they will conduct community-engaged research to explore themes pertaining to home and relatedness among Latinx youth living in the continental U.S.