This month’s member spotlight is a feature on Luisana (Luisa) Rodríguez (she/her)! Luisa has been living in Vermont for 3.5 years and is based in South Burlington. She works across community building, research, and communications, with a focus on bridging the gap between research, policy, and the communities they’re meant to serve. She also co-leads Hermanas Vermont, organizing social events that connect Latinas across the state.
Find Luisa on LinkedIn at Luisana (Luisa) Rodriguez or check out her work with Hermanas Vermont on Instagram!
Photo courtesy of Sarah Kjelleren.
Tell us a bit about your background before arriving in VT and what brought you to the state.
I am from Venezuela, where I studied psychology. I moved to Vermont right after I completed my bachelor’s, and honestly, I didn’t know much about the state before arriving. But I stayed, and over time, Vermont started to feel like another home. Not because it was easy, but because I found community here, and eventually realized I wanted to be part of building it. That’s where everything else started.
How did you get into your career?
Not in a straight line at all! My background is in psychology, but when I got to Vermont, I had to start over professionally in a new country, a new language, a new system. I started to find opportunities as they came: writing for publications, doing community outreach, coordinating events, and over time, I realized the through line in all of it was communication and research. Now I work across a few roles simultaneously: bilingual communications at Widewail, research outreach for an NIH-funded study on Latino immigrant health at Dartmouth College, and building community through Hermanas Vermont, a Latina professional network I co-founded that’s grown to over 150 members. It’s not a traditional career path, but it reflects who I am today.
Why are you a member of the Vermont Professionals of Color Network?
Because it’s a genuinely useful and thoughtful network. Knowing other professionals of color in Vermont is a reminder that we’re here, we’re working, and we have things to offer this state. It was also a real inspiration for me and my co-founder, Isa; seeing what VT PoC was building gave us the push to trust ourselves and start building something from scratch, too, which became Hermanas Vermont.
What strategies have helped you navigate challenges in Vermont?
Building community on purpose, which is partly why I co-founded Hermanas Vermont. Having a network of other Latinas who get it, without having to explain the context, has been everything. And honestly, being willing to hold multiple roles simultaneously while building toward something bigger has kept me moving even when individual doors were slow to open.
Tell us about the work you’re currently doing.
Right now, I’m juggling a few things that I’m proud of. At Dartmouth College (!!!) I support an NIH-funded research project on Latino immigrant health, doing community outreach, participant recruitment, and translating research protocols and early findings into information that community members can actually trust. At Widewail, I write bilingual review responses at high volume. And through Hermanas Vermont, I organize monthly social events for Latinas across the state. I also recently joined the Peace and Justice Center as a board member and have found real joy in supporting efforts that make our community better.
On top of that, I find it incredibly rewarding to remotely collaborate with ALAF (Latin American Futures Association) on a visual ethnographic project as a project manager, combining Portuguese, Spanish, and English with my team depending on the day. I’m also deep in the rabbit hole of signal watching for AYNI Futuros, where I share and categorize the most relevant news I find around the internet by impact area.
What drives me is the gap between research or policy and the people those things are supposed to serve.
What opportunities do you see for your industry in Vermont?
Vermont has a real opportunity to build a more culturally competent research and communications infrastructure, especially as the Latino population grows and becomes a more significant part of the workforce and civic life. Latinos are already part of your schools, your neighborhoods, your local economy, and that presence should be reflected in policy making and community development, too.
How can Vermont better support its BIPOC residents?
Make it easier to build community. Help fund cultural events, support affinity networks, and create accessible spaces where people can connect and belong. Throughout my work with community members here, I’ve come to realize that outreach is one of the most important pieces as well: making sure folks actually know about efforts that could benefit them, and know who to reach out to. Visibility and access go hand in hand.
Are there other things (events/opportunities/jobs/etc) you’d like to share with the VT BIPOC community?
If you’re a Latina in Vermont (or know one), Hermanas Vermont exists for you! We do monthly events, we’re building a real professional network, and we’d love to have you. I am also accepting participants for the Latiné Immigration and Health Study (LIHS), so if you’re interested in knowing more about it, find me on LinkedIn and let’s chat!
What advice would you give to young BIPOC professionals starting their careers in Vermont?
As an immigrant, you quickly realize that when “opening new doors”, sometimes doors don’t exist for us yet, and you have to build the window yourself and find an entirely new way in. And there’s something so brave about that! You’re stepping into a workforce, a culture, a system that already existed before you arrived, all while carrying a whole other world inside you that shaped who you are. That interplay between two worlds is a strength. It gives you perspectives, adaptability, and ways of seeing that people who’ve only ever known one system simply don’t have. It’s just easy to forget that when you’re constantly the one adapting to everyone else’s normal. My biggest advice: find your people early. The professional and personal challenges can be so much more manageable when you’re not navigating them alone, and when you’re around people who remind you that what you bring to the table is worth a lot.
