Jose Antonio Vargas

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the non-profit media and culture organization Define American, named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. His best-selling memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” was published by HarperCollins in 2018. Most recently, he co-produced Heidi Schreck’s acclaimed Broadway play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which was nominated for two 2019 Tony awards, including “Best Play.” In 2011, the New York Times Magazine published a groundbreaking essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME magazine worldwide with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up cover story he wrote. Among films he’s produced and directed are “Documented,” an authobiographical film that aired on CNN, and “White People,” an MTV special on what it means to be young and white in a demographically changing America. A product of the San Francisco Bay Area, he is a proud graduate of San Francisco State University (’04), where he was named Alumnus of the Year in 2012, and Mountain View High School (’00). An elementary school named after Vargas opened in his hometown of Mountain View, California in August 2019.

*The Holy Trinity that are Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou. *Ideas, especially ones I haven’t thought about or agree with *The centrality of storytelling and narrative change

Migration is natural.