Nicole Maldonado

I am a doctoral student at National Louis University in the Community Psychology program. I am also a tenant organizer with the Autonomous Tenants Union, an organization that I helped co-found in 2016 in the Albany Park neighborhood. In that role, I work with tenants to fight eviction, unjust conditions and to organize tenant unions in their buildings to build power in the neighborhood. For my day job, I work as the Education Coordinator for Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, where I build curriculum and plan workshops to bring more wealth building and housing resources and knowledge to the south and west sides of the city.

What can I say about my time in the NEIU Sociology program? As a first generation college student, I spent seven years bouncing around at various universities in Chicago and changing majors several times while racking up debt. It wasn't until I decided to change my major to Sociology and start at NEIU that I had my first experience with finding a community. I am so grateful for the eye-opening education I had during my time there. Taking classes related to feminism on the margins and critical race theory was crucial for my personal growth as a white woman. This was also where I first was exposed to neoliberalism as a concept, something that continues to impact so many aspects of the work we do to change the world, and in my opinion is not considered enough when attempting to craft policy and programming. Even though I am getting my PhD in another discipline, I am always surprised at how often the concepts of hegemony, conflict theory, and postmodernism often apply to the conversations I am having in the classroom. How does one work in academia or social services without understanding Foucault's concept of power/knowledge? How do we challenge the power structures all around us without first understanding the ways that we are socialized to do just the opposite? Sociology gave me the theoretical foundation that allowed me to then move to action and begin organizing in my community and multiple workplaces since I have graduated. It is easy to imagine and work toward something different when we have the knowledge that things haven't always been this way.