Julissa is the director of development at Define American, an organizations that uses the power of story to transcend politics and shift the conversation around citizenship.  She is also the co-founder and Chairman of the Ascend Educational Fund, a college scholarship and mentorship program for New York City immigrant students regardless of their immigration status.  Julissa built a successful career on Wall Street working at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch and had seemingly achieved the American Dream of wealth and status, and yet she was not part of what defined American.  Arce asked herself, what if she defined American- a woman from Mexico who while undocumented achieved careers success.  Her powerful story has been featured in ELLE Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Telemundo, MSNBC and others.

• Julissa’s struggle and journey as an undocumented immigrant 
• What she learned from her parents struggle
• How Julissa financed her college education working on a funnel cakes stand in another city
• How she got a job at Goldman Sachs and thrived
• How she dealt with her feelings of living on borrowed time, feeling that she could be discovered at any time
• What she learned from the time when her heart was pulling her to go back to Mexico to be with her terminally ill father but yet couldn’t leave the country as that would have meant not being able to come back
• How mentorship guided her helping her succeed at Goldman Sachs
• “The more we rise to the top, the more we make room for others”
• The immigrant’s characteristics: Sacrifice, perseverance, resrourcefulness, hard work and the ability to conquer adversity
• The great work Julissa is doing at the Ascend Educational Fund to enable students of exceptional promise to reach their full potential through higher education.

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