Valerie is a story keeper who collects, preserves and chronicles histories of people of color. She believes that our communities have one of a kind accounts of the past that need to be told. She preserves stories by engaging with individuals, communities and organizations to earn their trust. Working together they produce oral histories and preserve documents in a digital archive. She then uses these testimonies to create educational materials such as online exhibits, walking tours, talks and school curriculum. Her work contributes to community engagement and pride. It allows for the sharing of stories with future generations.
For the last three years she has served as host of the Big Idea, a monthly discussion sponsored by Humanities Kansas featuring underrepresented scholars from around the state.
Her talk “Beyond Brown: Mexican Responses Before and After Brown v Board is part of the Humanities Kansas Speakers Bureau.
Her article “Kansas City’s Mexican Community and the Guadalupe Center” can be found on the Pendergast Years: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression. She also has a chapter titled “Unraveling the Myths of the Chicano Movement in Kansas” based on her oral histories of the Chicano Movement in Kansas Matters: Twenty-First-Century Writers on the Sunflower State published by the University Press of Kansas.
Ph.D. in History, University of California, Berkeley
Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation in History