CHC Class of: 2021
Majors: Economics and Spanish    
Favorite book: “Elsewhere” by Gabrielle Zevin
Coffee or tea: Coffee! But matcha lattes are a close second.
Song on repeat: “dimeback” by Mk.gee
Advice for aspiring law students: Find a career or academic mentor. This can be invaluable, especially for first-gens. Try to enjoy and live in the present—you WILL get to law school!
Someone who inspires you: My closest friends in law school.

Adrianna Vaca-Navarro remembers her father waking up as early as 3 a.m. to head out for work in the orchards of Hood River, Oregon.

One of his tasks – spraying pesticides on the trees – was particularly dangerous to his health, given that many farmworkers cannot afford healthcare with their employers.

Vaca-Navarro says the aroma of the pesticides “followed my father for years.” Each day, the toxic smell came home with him and he would have to take his clothes off in a separate room. They were washed separately from the rest of the family’s laundry to reduce contamination.

Vaca-Navarro, a Clark Honors College graduate who is now a law student at UC-Berkeley, describes this as one of the “most jarring memories of my childhood.” She still worries that the dangerous chemicals could be detrimental to her father’s health.

“When you’re a child, and you’re growing up, you don’t really see those inequities as being products of a system that is set up against you,” she says. “Retrospectively, I was able to identify that certain systems were not made for people like me to thrive in.”

Living with this realization has emboldened her sense of purpose throughout her academic career. As a first-generation student, Vaca-Navarro set her sights on becoming a lawyer, graduating from the CHC in 2021 with degrees in economics and Spanish.

The relationships she built along the way and the opportunities she has sought out have landed her a spot at Berkeley. Now, she works to leverage her identity to help communities that are in need, aiming to fill the gaps within the legal system that she is studying.

Building community through her education

Vaca-Navarro grew up as the younger of two children. Her mother helped to raise her and her brother while her father worked in the orchards. The family shared a single bedroom in a “cabina,” Spanish for a tiny living space set up as housing for farmworkers.

All the family had room for was a single mattress and a crib, meaning that Vaca-Navarro's father often slept on the floor so his wife and children were more comfortable. When she was in middle school, the family moved into a bigger home – a single-wide trailer. 

To Vaca-Navarro, Hood River was a place that had two sides. It was a tourist attraction, drawing skiers and sailing enthusiasts to the famous Columbia Gorge. But it was also a town that seemed to segregate Latinos from the rest of the community. That strengthened her solidarity with people who had the same background as her. 

She attended Hood River Valley High School, where she solidified her passion for law. All around her, she heard plenty of anti-immigrant sentiment, especially from the then-new president, Donald Trump. “Seeing the rhetoric he (got) away with, spewing about my identity, the identity of my family – it’s what made me want to do immigrant rights work and public interest law,” she says now. 

She was helped by an English teacher at her school who “was one of the main teachers that really saw my potential and believed in me,” Vaca-Navarro says. “She thought my writing was good. She knew that I could get there – I remember her pulling me aside one day and saying, ‘you need to go to law school.’”

When she arrived at UO and the CHC, Vaca-Navarro struggled somewhat and her transition as a first-generation college student was difficult at first. She had a hard time finding friends who shared her identity. “Sometimes, I would go days without speaking Spanish,” she says.

After her first year, her brother moved to Eugene and she was able to rely on him for a cultural and familial connection. 

She was also able to find community in other places. She joined the UO Mock Trial team after learning about it at a CHC orientation event. “It was a group of people that maybe as a student, I wouldn’t have necessarily gravitated toward,” she recalls. “But then we became a team and it was so different because we’re all sharing a passion.”

Vaca-Navarro met one of her closest friends, Maggie Miller, through mock trial. Miller is also a UO alum with a degree in political science. She remembers being drawn to Vaca-Navarro because they had a lot of the same interests and political views. 

“She has a really unique worldview that has shaped mine, in a way,” says Miller. “We can always laugh together, but we can also talk about difficult things that are going on in the world.” 

Miller says one thing that struck her about Vaca-Navarro was her work ethic and her dedicated nature. “It’s really inspiring to have a friend that you can admire and look up to like her,” she says now.
 

In addition to her newfound friendships she made in mock trial, Vaca-Navarro was able to travel across the country for the first time. The first time she ever saw Berkeley’s campus was on a mock trial trip. “I thought it was super beautiful and started considering it legitimately as a law school that I could go to,” she reminisces. “I don’t think I would have had those experiences had it not been for mock trial.”

In the classroom, her economics major allowed her to “think critically in ways that I hadn’t thought of before.” she says. Her Spanish major allowed her to “forge a connection with her community.”

And to tie it all together, the Clark Honors College provided a balance between her studies of language and math, allowing her to continue reading and writing, which is something she loved to do. 

Following her junior year, Vaca-Navarro worked as an administrative assistant at Immigration Counseling Services, a Portland based non-profit law firm. 

She helped clients with forms, conducted translations, performed outreach to communities, and scheduled meetings for lawyers. Her assignments allowed her to work with the people the firm was assisting, while also building her understanding of the behind-the-scenes legal work. “I like the direct services aspect and being able to learn about the law simultaneously,” she says. 

It was in this role that she was able to first witness an asylum hearing with one of the firm’s attorneys, Imogene Mankin. The hearing was the final step for a client seeking asylum, and Vaca-Navarro was able to watch Mankin formulate the arguments on behalf of the person.
“I saw the judge grant the asylum claim,” Vaca-Navarro remembers. “It was super powerful to be a part of.”

Being able to see this hearing and work directly with immigrants in Oregon reminded her that most of the time, her community works in sectors that are not portrayed in academia. “I’ve always seen my education as an opportunity to bring light to my identities,” she says. “It reconfirmed my need to write my thesis in a light that was related to my community.” 

Consolidating her experiences through the CHC thesis

Her thesis, titled “Border imperialism and Agricultural Servitude in the Lives of Mexican Immigrants,” brought together her life experience and her complex understanding of the systems that undercut the agricultural industry. The paper was split into three sections, the first of which was a narrative, based on the idea that legality is a concept manufactured by structures in society. 

Her thesis advisor was Analisa Taylor, an associate professor of Spanish. “I couldn’t have done it without her,” Vaca-Navarro emphasizes. “She very much believed in me.”

Taylor met Vaca-Navarro in a class called “Latinx Literatures and Cultures.”

“She distinguished herself from the beginning,” Taylor recalls. “I really notice it when I have a student who is clearly reading and can make important contributions to the discussion. She gave a presentation about a reading called ‘The Social Construction of Whiteness,’ and that really made me recognize that she was bringing in a lot of critical thinking and precise vocabulary.” 

Vaca-Navarro was the first Latina student that Taylor worked with on a thesis, which Taylor noted was very significant for her. 

However, during the time Vaca-Navarro was in the midst of crafting her thesis, Taylor was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to take a leave of absence. Yet, she took it upon herself to continue working as Vaca-Navarro’s advisor, highlighting that “she deserved to have at least one professor who validated the knowledge that she brought to her learning at the university.”

Vaca-Navarro was “over the moon” when she found out Taylor would continue being her advisor. “She was always motivating,” Vaca-Navarro recalls. “Even when I thought I was being stupid or drawing lines that didn’t exist, she always made me feel like I was making sense to her.”

Because the breast cancer diagnosis coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, Taylor and Vaca-Navarro would talk over Zoom regularly, discussing Vaca-Navarro's thesis, their lives, and struggles in general. “She saw me as not just a student intellectual, but as a person with all of these experiences that were very valuable to share,” Vaca-Navarro says. 

The two became very close over the course of Vaca-Navarro's thesis process. Taylor explained that working on this project was “life saving for me, in terms of anchoring myself to my identity as a thinker.”

The thesis was awarded the CHC Barbara Corrado Pope Award in 2021 for its excellence.  

After graduation, Vaca Navarro continued working at the Immigration Counseling Service before moving to a position as a program coordinator at Innovation Law Lab in 2022. There, she worked with the logistics team running Equity Corps of Oregon, a program aimed at providing universal representation for people in Oregon who are in immigration removal proceedings. “It was a lot of making sure that people were getting the services that they needed, just doing the most we could,” she says.

She also worked with the Oregon Worker’s Relief program to assist farmworkers in Oregon who were affected by Covid-19 or wildfires. She helped the program set up a system through which farmworkers could report income loss and receive stipends to cover basic needs.

“Being a child of immigrants, it can be a very personal area to work in, and being able to see your work impacting people positively is just super reaffirming,” she says now.

At the same time, she took the LSAT entrance exam and applied to law schools around the country. As a first-generation student, she realized – looking back – that she had no idea how to make herself attractive to law schools.

She leaned on Taylor and Mankin, who helped steer her through the process. They wrote her letters of recommendation and talked through different approaches. Still, Vaca-Navarro wasn’t sure she belonged.

It’s something that stuck with her, even though she had the grades and test scores necessary to get into law school. “I have a lot of imposter syndrome,” she says. “I feel like I work hard, but I don’t feel very smart. But when you have a professor who you think is incredibly intelligent, and a scholar in a field that you’re interested in calling you smart, it definitely helps. It allowed me to shoot my shot, because who knows what could happen?”

She gained acceptance to Stanford, Harvard and Columbia but chose Berkeley because of its proximity to home and the financial assistance she was offered. 

Next steps

She started in August 2023, and it’s been a whirlwind since. Today, she serves as an associate editor at the California Law Review. She is a student lead at the Berkeley Immigration Group and recruitment chair of La Alianza Law Students of Latin American Descent. She also serves and mentorship chair at the law school’s Womxn of Color Collective. 

She’s had a judicial externship for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, working in the law chambers of Senior Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon. She sat in on hearings and helped draft memos on asylum appeals.

For Vaca-Navarro, success in law school is a mix of balancing extracurricular activities, classes, and finding time to have a social life. “A lot of people tend to overcommit in law school,” she explains. It’s important to “prioritize the things that are a lot more pressing versus the things that can wait.”

Having worked in immigration law throughout her entire career thus far, Vaca-Navarro admits that she has been feeling burnt out. “It can be really difficult to learn so much about the immigration system and not feel jaded toward it,” she says. 

This upcoming summer, she’ll be working at a law firm in San Francisco, exploring areas of the legal field that she hasn’t been exposed to before. “I am excited to see that kind of work.” She says. “I’m excited to see what else is out there.”