On the 25th episode of Immigration Today! Angeline Chen welcomes Juliana Serrano from Planned Parenthood. Juliana Serrano is the Vice President of Advocacy & Equity at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley (PPPSGV). In this role, Juliana works to advance their mission through the strategic implementation of electoral and advocacy activities that promote policies favorable to Planned Parenthood at all levels of government. She creates and leads the vision and strategy for community affairs, government affairs, and advocacy work, and she also leads the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, focused on partnerships for health equity in our communities. Before this, Juliana was the Senior Associate for Peace & Justice and the Office for Creative Connections at All Saints Church for more than eleven years. She was honored to work on efforts such as police reform; the fight for $15; immigrant rights; homelessness; affordable housing; health care access; reintegration; environmental justice; voting rights and more. To this day, she still serves on The City of Pasadena’s first Community Police Oversight Commission as well as many other positions that have allowed her to advocate for change in Pasadena and greater Los Angeles. Juliana is the daughter of Colombian immigrant parents. Juliana received her B.A. in Psychology, with minors in Sociology and Philosophy, from Loyola Marymount University (LMU/LA).
In this episode Juliana tells us about her spirituality and life in college and how that ignited her love for social change. She has been an advocate for many communities all throughout her years and eventually landed in Planned Parenthood doing work in reproductive justice. Juliana describes the work she does at PPPSGV and the intersection between immigrant rights and reproductive justice. She also goes into detail about the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and what Planned Parenthood is doing to fight this. She expresses the way in which these threats to healthcare access affect immigrant and marginalized communities at a higher rate. |