SAMANTHA ARRIOZOLA is a Xicana from Des Plaines, Illinois. She is an alumn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.A. Creative Writing, as well as a part of the 8th Cohort of First Wave, a Hip-Hop and urban arts scholarship program at the university. She has worked with The JVN Project, a Hip-Hop centered organization that seeks to empower and uplift communities, for the past five years, as both a One Life Writing Workshop Facilitator and, most currently, the Youth Programming Director. Samantha has recently started working with Girls Inc. as the Outreach Facilitator for East High School through the Goodman Community Center. She currently resides in Madison, WI, visits her home in Des Plaines, IL for her mom’s tortillas, and misses her best friend and cohort sister, Sydney, from Long Island, NY very much.