Our Museum Staff

Alisha Vasquez is a krip, Chicana mama whose Tucsonense family has occupied the unceded homelands of the Tohono O’odham, Apache, and Yoeme people for six generations. Becoming a parent funneled all of her past experiences, knowledges, and beliefs into a new solidification of her values where she became a more joyous version of her analytical self. She honors her Mexican American-Tucsonense family, punk rock, living disabled, an acceptance and rejection of the academy, and existing within community as the epochs of her education until becoming a parent.

Vasquez holds a BA in History and Women's Studies from the University of Arizona and MA from San Francisco State University where her graduate work examined the rise neoliberal capitalism alongside multiple social movements in the United States, emphasizing disabled and Chicanx intersectional material realities. She taught middle school, high school, and college using these positions to resource the community. She is currently the Communications and Accessibility Manager Southwest Folklife Alliance / National Folklife Network; Co-Director of the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum at the Sosa-Carrillo House; and is following through on passion projects that use her training as an historian, community organizer, and educator to capture what it means to exist in so-called Tucson.