Hailing from the tech-infested shore of the Bay Area, André recently escaped the housing crisis and continues their search for home and community in Chicago. Having graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Linguistics, their primary interests are in consensual indigenous language revitalization, eventual fieldwork in Austronesian languages, and deconstructing the linguistic hegemony that exists in the Philippines. Apart from academia, they worked in grassroots QTAPI (Queer & Trans Asian/Pacific Islander) spaces as an organizer and spent many years among community members and colleagues behind the scenes of the Queer & Asian Conference (QACON), an annual, student- and alumni-led, non-profit collegiate event on the west coast that aims to connect, empower, and uplift QTAPI folks as well as provide them with the tools to start grassroots organizing in their own campus communities. Now at AFIRE, they hope to build lasting capacity and strengthen community relationships. On their free time, André enjoys singing, cooking, and sharing dank memes.