Born and raised in Oakland, California, Monica migrated to the windy city to earn her bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Economics from Loyola University Chicago. Despite sub-zero temperatures every winter, Monica has been happy to call Chicago home for over a decade now.
Monica has worked as a marketing specialist in the mortgage lending and automotive industries. In her previous role, she spent more than five years managing the international sales division for World Book Inc., a legacy publisher specializing in non-fiction print and digital content for K-12 schools and public libraries worldwide. A passionate advocate for education, Monica volunteers as a mentor in Chicago’s public school system, where she was initially inspired to find a way to make higher education a priority for students from low-income communities. Her exhaustive research led her to Greenhouse Scholars, whose mission and values deeply resonated with the impact she aspires to make in the community.
In her spare time she enjoys traveling to explore world cultures, reading novels, singing along to Broadway musicals, and binge-watching documentaries.