About Andrea

Andrea is a teacher, an author and an inspirational speaker. Her time is spent working to empower those whose path in life she has experienced.

Andrea’s life story was splashed on the front page of the local metro section in 1994. Her mother died unexpectedly when she was 8, forcing her to live with her father and stepmother. Her stepmother emotionally, physically and sexually abused Andrea daily for eight years. She was finally caught, tried, convicted and sentenced to 25-50 years in prison.

The Honorable Judge Phillip D. Schaefer, who handed down the sentence, called this “the worse case of abuse of a child” that he has ever seen in his court, calling the abuse “heinous”.

As a young adult, it didn’t take long for her childhood to catch up with her. The years of humiliation and abuse set Andrea on a path towards self destruction. She talks of wanting to give up at many points in her life, and even times when she wanted to die. “As a young adult I became severely depressed. I got up every day and saw a world that I had to somehow survive. I was lonely and I needed someone to love me because I didn’t know how to love myself. I had low self esteem and got into an unhealthy relationship. I became co-dependent and couldn’t find the strength to leave. I wanted desperately to feel happy but didn’t know how. I started experimenting with drugs. I started using cocaine. I lost my scholarship and got kicked out of college. I became a poor young mother. I put myself in dangerous situations and even got pulled into selling drugs to survive. I was lost in the world. I didn’t understand why I was still alive or the purpose of life.”

“Each time I picked myself up off the ground, I realized that it was not my situation that caused my suffering, the problem was my beliefs, thoughts and perspective about myself and the world around me. Through my pain I was connected to a place of strength inside me. I found a state of mind that allowed me to rise above any obstacle and fight any fear. With this new perspective and inner strength, I picked myself up off the ground for the last time, I brushed myself off and I refused to give up.”

Andrea graduated with her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Western Michigan University where she stayed on to complete her graduate work in Behavior Analysis. While in graduate school, she founded a student organization to empower graduate students of color and started Kalamazoo’s first Grassroots Leadership Development Program with the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (of Chicago).

After graduate school, she became a community activist working to empower women, at-risk youth and the Latino community. She recruited community leaders to help build the foundation of New Latino Visions (NLV), a non-profit organization to empower the Latino community. Most recently she was selected as one of only twenty two women nationwide to attend the National Hispana Leadership Institute. She’s attended Leadership training programs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Creative Center for Leadership in Colorado. She has written two books (will be available soon) and has inspired others with her story.

Andrea has dedicated her life to spreading her message of hope and inspiration: “No matter where you come from or what you’ve been through, you can do anything you set your mind to and you can become anyone you want to be. You are the creator of your reality.” Andrea