Team Spotlight: Nellely

If you give us a call or pay a visit, you may just encounter our newest Administrative Assistant Nellely (ney-el-ee). Raised in Petaluma and born in Hidalgo, Mexico, this Sonoma State University grad majored in English. With a love of writing and literature, she comes to us from the Petaluma Regional Library, where she worked in community outreach, as well as translating and interpreting. When she’s not making our operations run smooth, she’s hard at work on her debut novel and other writing projects. Her other passions? Boba, her dog Boni, and chocolate in abundance!

Nellely took some time out to share a bit more about herself:

What excites you about working with APILO and the communities we serve?

I am excited to be working with a very diverse team at both offices and getting to work with multilingual coworkers on the admin team. As well as directly serving communities that are underrepresented and underserved, especially as a Latina woman and DACA recipient. APILO helps in so many areas that these communities need and I am grateful to be a part of that.

What expertise and interests do you bring to the organization?

My native language is Spanish, so I hope to bring effective translation and interpretation skills for our spanish speaking community. I also participated in a lot of community outreach events in Sonoma County that strengthened my interpersonal and communication skills. As a dreamer and daughter of immigrants, I have faced a lot of similar issues and understand the difficulty of receiving help with language barriers.

What are your passions beyond work?

I graduated from university with my English B.A. due to my love for storytelling and creative writing. My goal has always been to write a novel and hopefully after that write some more. I would like to spread awareness of the difficulties of undocumented immigrants and their experience in this country.

Thanks for your time Nellely, and welcome to the APILO team!