Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
Sandy’s new female speaking club strives to amplify women’s voices
07-06-2025 By Savannah Stacey
These women have entered their public speaking era.
Utah Vipers women’s rugby team takes shot at a national title
05-15-2025 By Elle Crossley
There’s “no choice but to win” for this team, whose members range in age from 18 to 52.
80 Years Later: Student Documentary Revisits Utah's Topaz Camp
05-11-2025 By Jordan Thornblad
"It [is] so important to Utah history that we don’t brush this under the rug."
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Maria Pastrana Lopez’s dream of becoming a doctor and saving lives seemed impossible.
Living in South America, where Pastrana Lopez is from, can be challenging for those who want to pursue higher education. Private universities can cost much more than the average monthly salary, she said, and public universities can have low rates of admission.
When Pastrana Lopez was a child, her mother worked in a hospital. Watching healthcare professionals save patient lives, Pastrana Lopez found inspiration at a young age.
Five years ago, Pastrana Lopez’s aunt offered her the first step toward that dream – a sponsorship to study in the U.S.
“Without hesitating I said yes. It was the opportunity of my life,” she said.
Pastrana Lopez already spoke basic English but felt nervous about applying for her student visa, completing high school and applying to higher education, all the while trying to master a second language.
To enter the United States legally, Pastrana Lopez had to demonstrate that she was able to qualify for a student visa and present it to immigration.
“Going through the process of obtaining my student visa was very challenging, especially when having to be in front of an immigration officer asking questions,” she said.
After Pastrana Lopez came to the United States, she faced additional requirements for GPA and credits in order to maintain her status as an international student.
Pastrana Lopez applied to Salt Lake Community College two years ago and is majoring in pre-health sciences.
Pastrana Lopez is working at SLCC’s International Student Services as she looks to help fund her education.
The job helps in two ways – she’s gained tools that have helped her develop in her career, and she’s stayed up-to-date on information regarding immigration and student visas.
“Maria was very proficient,” said Venita Ross, international student admissions advisor. “She gained experience and adapted very well to the system.”
SLCC’s International Student Services help international students adapt to the new education system, which can be significantly different from their native country.
Advisors offer student orientations on what to expect and also invite students to participate in or join on-campus clubs so that they may feel more involved.
“Get involved on-campus and in community service,” Ross said. “It helps [students] connect and get in network with people.”
A difficult aspect for international students can be the distance from family. Pastrana Lopez first came to the United States alone as a teenager. Her mother and brother have since immigrated, but the rest of her family still lives in Colombia.
The separation forced her not only to grow and become who she is now, but also to get out of her comfort zone.
“Having to let her go and not being able to be there to be her support was the hardest part,” said Claudia Lopez Gomez, Maria’s mother.
Living in the U.S. has brought discoveries for Pastrana Lopez in how the cultures differ. In Colombia, she said, people hug, kiss and show affection to each other often, which she said doesn’t see often in Utah.
“People in Colombia are more caring,” she said. “If you want to be in the U.S. you can’t be weak.”
Though Pastrana Lopez initially wanted to be a doctor, she has decided to pursue a career in pharmacy and plans to start working toward her bachelor’s degree at the University of Utah following SLCC graduation this fall.
“I wasn’t sure if I could make it, but in the end – if you do it with effort – anything is possible,” she said. “You just have to put in time and dedication.”
Andrea Barboza wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Andrea Barboza wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Cultural pride is important. But for people raised with two cultures, it can be tricky to navigate.
“Humans are creatures of habit,” said Brenda Santoyo, coordinator at Salt Lake Community College’s Dream Center, which works with undocumented students and mixed-status families. “We do things simply out of the tradition of doing it.”
Children raised in a country different from their parents can find difficulty in balancing their identity within two cultures.
A September 2020 report by Pew Research Center showed leaning on multiple identifiers is not uncommon for Hispanic and Latino people, noting that “the use of these terms varies across immigrant generations and reflects their diverse experiences.”
Generation, country of birth and use of the Spanish language all factor into the terms a person identifies with.
Keiko Pozo, a speech pathology student at the University of Utah, identifies as Hispanic. And she tells people she is from Peru when asked where she is from.
“That’s where I was born, that’s the culture I’ve been trying to keep,” Pozo said.
Identifiers are different for everyone.
Santoyo, for example, said she uses several identifiers interchangeably.
“In Mexico, I probably wouldn’t say I’m Mexican American, I would just say I’m Mexican,” she said, adding that her language around her identity changes depending on who she speaks with. “Over here, I would say I’m Mexican American or Chicana.”
Santoyo said her use of “Chicana” depends on whether someone is familiar with the term.
Sinthia Rosado Veronica, a nursing and sociology student at SLCC, said being in-between two cultures makes life complicated. Born in Mexico but raised in the United States, Veronica’s expression of culture changes depending on context.
“In my house, I go by Katy. I think of that as my name within Mexican culture,” she said. “I go by Sinthia at my job and at school.”
Living between two cultures also brought pressure to conform. Veronica recalled her siblings pointing out her “white people music” and being questioned on her ability to speak Spanish by other Spanish speakers.
“I used to feel in-between. Ni de aquí, ni de allá,” Veronica said, using the Spanish term meaning “not from here, nor there.”
Veronica said though she’s been living in the United States since she was a few months old and sees it as her home, she doesn’t feel American. She also struggles to identify with Mexican culture because she wasn’t raised there.
It’s a feeling Gisselle Ramirez, a business and communications student at Westminster College, said she recognizes as she navigates between two cultures.
“I don’t feel like I fully belong in American culture,” she said, explaining she has been influenced by the United States but identifies more with Mexican culture. “It’s very conflicting at times.”
As a child, Ramirez explained, she struggled to make sense of the differences she saw between herself and her peers, especially after moving from Texas to Utah.
“When I was younger, and I didn’t understand it, I felt like, ‘Why am I Mexican? Why can’t I be like everyone else?’”
But as she got older and grew more comfortable, she felt more confident in her Mexican identity. Now she feels like a “weird mix” of the two cultures and that the combination feels like an additional part of her identity.
“I don’t feel like I fully belong in American culture, there’s things I do with the culture, but I spend so much time with my family so I have their culture mixed in, too,” Ramirez said.
The pull of two different cultures affects more than identity. It also impacts decision making, Ramirez said. She recalled her parents pushing against the idea of taking a gap semester during college because her parents grew up with the mindset that moving through school without a break and graduating college was the best way to be successful.
“That’s been hard to navigate,” Ramirez said of balancing her parents’ expectations and her own preferences.
Mexican parents, she said, tend to be more strict with children, especially when compared to American culture, which she sees as more lenient. That leniency is something Ramirez said she’ll borrow from American culture for her own children.
It’s a notion Veronica echoed when thinking about her own future. She said she won’t raise her children to value Machismo, the Spanish term used to describe overt and aggressive masculinity.
“If I ever have kids, don’t tell them not to cry like a girl,” she recalled telling her father,
noting she relates more to American views on gender roles than the views often held in Mexican culture.
American culture has influenced Pozo’s decision to live separately from her family once she is married. Having lived in the U.S. since the age of seven, some American customs feel more normal than her family’s customs.
“[In Peru] everyone lives in the same house. When someone gets married, they build a second floor. Eventually everyone ends up living in one household,” Pozo said. “[In America] once you’re married, you move out.”
Being raised in two cultures can make finding cultural pride a long process, said Santoyo, who added she has taken deliberate steps – including traveling to the city of Guanajuato – to learn more about her Mexican heritage.
“I got to see how it is on that side and compare it to what it’s like over here,” she said, pointing out that part of her journey has been learning about the indigenous tribe, Guamare, of which she is a descendant. “That culture shock helped me understand that there is a difference between the two, and that I have a lot to learn on the Mexican side.”
Still, Santoyo said, being close to Mexican culture has led her, unintentionally, to having predominantly Mexican American friends. That shared culture, she said, naturally helped her create connections.
“I wouldn’t be able to build a community without being Mexican,” she noted.
Pozo embraces the connections to several cultures. She was raised with Japanese – from her mother’s side – and Peruvian traditions, and began including American traditions after her family’s move to the U.S.
“It’s the differences that make us unique,” she said.
For nearly two years, the home office has been a common workplace for many Americans, allowing them to remain productive and employed during this pandemic. This flexibility is something many people with disabilities have long sought.
“The students I work with have disabilities, and most work while going to school,” said Fernando Quintero, accessibility adviser at the Disability Resource Center at Salt Lake Community College. “They have been able to work from home, which has made life much easier for them.”
He says students are more productive without having to deal with going to school and working in person. It gives them more energy to use elsewhere, making them more productive at work and able to spend more time with their families.
These students, Quintero said, often prefer to work at home because they can work anywhere in the house, take breaks as needed, have easy access to the bathroom, and health management tools.
“People with disabilities have been asking for remote work as an accommodation for years, and the pandemic shows it’s possible,” said Karolyn Campbell, executive director of the Disabled Rights Action Committee, a nonprofit in Salt Lake City.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities, except when an accommodation would cause undue hardship.
“Prior to the pandemic, people with disabilities were told that remote work options were not feasible or realistic, and they were not part of reasonable accommodations in a workplace environment,” she said. “Accessibility isn’t just good for employees, it’s good for employers, too.” Board members of the Disabled Rights Action Committee and people in the disability community that Campbell spoke with have a “better late than never” attitude.
“It’s nice that we have these opportunities now,” she said, “but frustrating that they only came about because able-bodied folks needed it.”
The shift to remote work has benefitted some, but a number of people with disabilities hold jobs that have to be done in person. This means employers and co-workers need to think about how they can accommodate these colleagues.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8.3% of employed people with a disability work in the leisure and hospitality sector. Employment in this sector fell by 8.2 million jobs in the first two months of the pandemic and is still 3.9 million jobs below February 2020 levels.
“It’s been really hard on people with intellectual, cognitive and developmental disabilities who maybe don’t have the same training and skills to work in professional environments,” said Matthew Wappett, executive director of the Utah State University Institute for Disability Research, Policy and Practice.
He said people with intellectual, cognitive and developmental disabilities have the highest rate of unemployment in the United States at 70%. But employers are slowly becoming more inclusive to people with disabilities..
“It used to be when you graduated from high school, you had special education during that time and then there was nothing,” he said. “That’s still the case especially with intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disabilities, but more and more I’m seeing parents pushing to have their kids have job opportunities and supportive employment where the end of school isn’t the end of the support.”
Avery Berschauer lives in Seattle and hosts the podcast “Basically Blind” where she talks about her experience with visual impairment and accessibility. She changed careers from working as a marketing professional to becoming a diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility consultant. She found it difficult to work in a traditional office.
“When I was in the office environment, there were a lot of people who didn’t know how to interact with me,” Berschauer said in an interview. “Having the power to set up my office exactly the way I want, knowing I’m not going to have awkward comments like ‘whoa that screen is huge, you must really be blind’ are all beneficial.”
When people are working remotely, employers and co-workers aren’t always privy to what assistive technologies, mobility devices, or other tools people are using, or if they are using different strategies to get their work done.
In Berschauer’s experience, disclosure isn’t always a choice. “I’ve been put in [interview] situations where I feel like I need to disclose that I have a vision condition. I can’t make great eye contact and my eyes shake a little bit,” she said.
Socially, people have made comments to her that they thought she was on drugs because of her eye movement, and she feels like she needs to get out in front of people’s assumptions before they assume wrong.
“Sometimes it didn’t seem to impact things, but other times I could feel a shift in the room,” she said. “You could tell at that point they made up their minds and weren’t taking me seriously.”
Disclosing a disability is a dilemma. It can help someone get the accommodations they need, but it can also open the door to discrimination.
“People have ableist attitudes and you just don’t know,” Campbell said. “It’s kind of roulette with your employer whether you are going to get someone who is understanding, who is going to provide those resources you need to do your job ... It introduces a lot of anxiety for people.”
Inaccessibility is a “creativity crisis,” Wappett said, noting many employers are resistant to changing standard business practices.
“Reasonable accommodation is a very fungible legal concept … ‘reasonable’ is a messy term,” he said.
For example, some job applications will list needing to be able to lift 50 pounds. “Well, what if somebody else helped them pick up the 50 pounds for that part of their job, and they did everything else? What about assistive technology? Driving a forklift?” Wappett said.
Berschauer says for a work environment to truly be accessible and inclusive, accessibility needs to be a priority.
“It’s a matter of attitudes,” she said. “People don’t account for inclusion and accessibility at the beginning of the planning process, and it’s something they try to plug in later. It can’t be an afterthought.”
A concept called “universal design” can be implemented to help standardize accessibility. Universal design considers how someone will interact with the environment.
“[It’s] flexible in the approach, providing multiple means of engagement and representation, and actions of expression,” said Quintero, with Salt Lake Community College.
“There are a million little ways that environments become inaccessible,” Campbell said, “and socially we need people who are thinking about building spaces and environments for the widest range of minds and bodies.”
Experts say for employers to make the workplace accessible they should reexamine the application and interview process.
“Starting with the format of the job listing online, making it screen reader accessible, making sure you are not including items in your list of qualifications that are not really necessary to the job unless they are really indispensable to the job,” Campbell said.
Next, employers need to examine the job qualifications.
“Think about how people with disabilities might be able to do that work,” Campbell said, “and phrase it in a way that’s inclusive of people who have a wide range of experience and backgrounds.”
Holding interviews virtually eases the burden on applicants and attracts a more diverse candidate pool, Campbell said. When she conducts interviews, she checks with applicants to make sure they can see and hear her and that they are able to communicate.
In the end, Wappett said, real change requires empathy and compassion. “There are benefits to [diversity and inclusion] with a healthier company, a more diverse workforce and it may help your bottom line but the real reason should be, ‘just be a good person, damnit.’”
Juliana DeMay wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORK We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text:
This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Juliana DeMay wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Nearly a year ago, Jillian Orr, with help from her sister, stitched a rainbow pride flag to the inside of her Brigham Young University graduation gown.
Orr filmed the process to post on the social media app TikTok. The video ended with Orr walking across the stage at her commencement ceremony last April and flashing the bright colors to the audience.
The video went viral, garnering 7.5 million views.
Orr created the video in protest of BYU’s Honor Code — in which students and faculty pledge to create “an atmosphere consistent with the ideals and principles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Among those principles is that same-sex relationships are not compatible with church teachings.
In the months since that first viral post, Orr has amassed a following of nearly 39,000 followersAnother video, with the title “Homophobic Assignment,” drew another 1.3 million views.
In that video, Orr shows viewers a quiz question from a marriage and family class required for her psychology degree. The multiple-choice question asks students to finish this idea: “One who truly loves LGBTQ people will …”
Orr explained in the video how her choice — “...love them unconditionally and accept whatever they want as what is best for them” — was graded as incorrect. The correct answer, she was told, was “… love them unconditionally while continuing to realize that their greatest happiness will come through living the gospel plan.”
Orr said TikTok is providing members of Generation Z “the information so they can choose and think for themselves. When given all the information and allowing people to learn, question and challenge, that is when people can make decisions for themselves.”
One of the hashtags Orr attached to her first viral video was #exmormon — a term that refers to someone who has left the Latter-day Saint faith. The hashtag began trending well before Orr used it, and its use has expanded since, catching the attention of younger audiences, especially those in Gen Z, with tagged videos receiving more than 1.4 billion views as of January 2023.
Layah Kou, a student at Salt Lake Community College, left the Latter-day Saint faith as a teenager, and without that association, she said, she found herself feeling lonely.
“My entire life I was taught to believe in God and that my purpose on Earth was to be with him again,” Kou said. “But now that I don’t, it feels like I don’t know anything anymore. I didn’t know my purpose.”
Kou said she found a sense of community on TikTok, watching videos of former Latter-day Saint creators like psychologist John Dehlin, who hosts the “Mormon Stories” podcast and interviews individuals on topics and personal experiences relating to the church.
“Seeing their experiences … and how relatable and similar [they were] to mine,” Kou said, “made me feel validated.”
Samantha Shelley and Tanner Gilliland, best friends and former students at BYU-Idaho, had left the Latter-day Saint faith and were processing that loss. In 2016, they created the web platform Zelph On The Shelf, making parody song videos and humorous responses to church blogs on Instagram, TikTik, YouTube and elsewhere. The tag line: “post-religion discourse but make it fun and cute.”
In a 2018 video, “My Favorite Sins,” Shelley and Gilliland take the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic song “My Favorite Things” (from “The Sound of Music”) to list things considered unholy by faithful Latter-day Saints: “Coffee for mornings and whiskey on weekends, hiking on Sunday with all of my dear friends. Exposing my shoulders and my stomach skin, these are a few of my favorite sins.”
“Gen Z is probably the first generation in Mormonism to have access to others to validate what they are going through,” Shelley said. “If you have doubts about the church, you can always find a community [on TikTok].”
As a creator who uses the tag #exmormon on TikTok, Shelley said the goal extends beyond just having a laugh with other former Latter-day Saints. “A lot of [creators],” she said, “are trying to give [viewers] an opportunity to consider whether their beliefs or ways of looking at the world might be skewed or wrong.”
In a talk at the church’s General Conference in April 2021, on Easter Sunday, President Russell M. Nelson told members of the faith to take their questions “to the Lord and to other faithful sources.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ young adult education program, called institute, introduced a new class last year, “Answering My Gospel Questions.” The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the class is aimed at helping students examine and discuss specific questions they have, and learn how to find answers from sources church leaders regard as reliable.
Some young adults, like Jill Morrison, a Utah Valley University film student, are fine with going to outside sources. “Accounts like Zelph On The Shelf let you actually explore those questions and find answers,” Morrison said. “It’s important for members of the church to really explore the history and maybe [the] negative sides of their religion.”
In March 2022, the American Survey Center found 34% of Gen Zers — roughly, people born between 1997 and 2012 — are religiously unaffiliated, compared to 29% of millennials (people born between 1980 and 1996). According to a study by the Pew Research Center, adults who are religiously unaffiliated stand at 29%, 6 percentage points higher than 2016.
Membership among younger Latter-day Saints has followed the trend, according to researcher Jana Riess’ book “The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church.” The book notes the church is retaining 45% of its young people in the United States, compared to 80% in generations past.
Orr, the BYU grad whose rainbow graduation gown went viral, said, “previous generations are told to obey, and I believe we have a new generation that is choosing to reflect on what they feel is right rather than what they are told is right. [Gen Z] is finally getting accurate information and choosing for themselves.”
Shelley added that, because of social media, younger people have greater access to information.
“In the past,” she said, “a Mormon in Salt Lake in the ’70s would have to go to a scary bookshop to get some forbidden book about the truth of [church founder] Joseph Smith.”
Shelley, who has created content for nearly every social media platform, said she believes there has been a cultural shift among the faith’s practicing and former members regarding views about those who decide to leave.
“Over the last 10 years, there’s been so many more people leaving the church, and they’re not doing it in the shadows anymore,” Shelley said. “It feels like the culture has shifted — the church itself seems like it’s made some kind of effort to not demonize people who leave.”
Nicole Spearman wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Nicole Spearman wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
