Vida Sanchez

Vida (she/they) dreams of self-determined Black, Indigenous, and/or migrant farmworker communities providing the human right to safe and affordable access to clean water, air, food, and shelter for all in California’s Central Valley and beyond. Having a migrant farmworker family, water justice is an extremely personal issue to her, with multiple cases of cancer associated with land use affecting close family and community members. In their undergraduate career, Vida studied Chemistry at UC Berkeley, participating in collaborative research with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and the Newark Water Coalition (NWC) to assess procedural injustices of the Bay Area Air Quality Municipal District (BAAQMD) odor complaint system in East Oakland, CA and mapping lead infrastructure in Newark, NJ. Additionally, Vida advised high-achieving low-income high school juniors and seniors in the Matriculate program, providing support with their college search process, personal statement essays, and financial aid resources. As a Master's Student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis, they currently coordinate a citizen science pilot study with the Environmental Coalition for Water and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, assessing the intersection of domestic groundwater well water quality, cancer, and socioeconomic status in the San Joaquin Valley and providing free comprehensible water quality reports to domestic groundwater well users. In the near future, Vida plans on working with her community network of Seaside, Salinas, and Watsonville to establish a center for domestic water, air, and soil monitoring, complete with its own community-operated laboratory, food sovereignty garden, and community space to democratize environmental health data and center community autonomy.