Where you grew up and your background can often have surprising effects on our lives and careers. We’ve asked folks from the community to tell us about how their background has affected them.

Jo Ferrone | AUTHOR | CREATOR | ANIMAL LOVER

I grew up in Oyster Bay, a hamlet located in the northeastern part of Nassau County, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. In second grade we were assigned to write a story. Mine was about a little girl who turned into a PB+J sandwich and got swallowed by a friendly but apparently hungry horse. My teacher liked it so much that she sent me off to share it with her friend, the librarian. It may still be somewhere in the archives of Oyster Bay Public Library because she asked to keep it; another honor! And given that I found myself in the shuffle of eight siblings wherein opportunities to stand out were scarce, I knew that writing would be my magic power. Plus it was so much fun to do. Read more>>

Danny Brunjes | Songwriter & Producer

First off, thanks so much for wanting to hear a bit about my story. I really appreciate what you are doing here locally, so I wanted to make sure I started by saying that. I am from right here in sunny south Florida. Sometimes it feels like I’m the last remaining millennial who was born and raised here and is still here. Palm Beach County, and West Palm Beach in particular tends to be pretty transient. But, despite how much the area and the people that occupy it have changed and evolved over my life here, I still love this place deeply and no matter where I am in the world it will always be home. Read more>>

Pearl Lau | Artist and Art Educator

I was born in Hong Kong right after my parents fled China in 1949. My mother, a German-American, married my Chinese father in the US when he was a student at Columbia University in New York. His student visa wasn’t renewed due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Only 100 Chinese were allowed to emigrate to the US annually. My mom, being her tenacious self, bought a Hong Kong birth certificate to allow us to come back to the US. We are all legal now but that just proved how silly the law was, Dad was still Chinese, but now had a Hong Kong birth certificate, which made him a British Subject. I learned from my mom not to give up, to try and figure out how to get things done. Read more>>

Deborah Bottorff | Artist

I was drawing from the time I was a young child. I was raised in Southern California where my many visits to Laguna Beach and its exciting art scene inspired me to choose art as my path. Read more>>

Ibrahim Nino | Personal Trainer & Content Creator

Like many people in Miami, i have the blessing of coming from a country in Latin America, like Venezuela. I consider that a blessing, regardless of your economic situation, you are never excempt from struggles and hard situations in countries like that Unlike most people in my country, i was lucky. I never missed a meal, there was always food on my table, one small vacation a year, until things started to get harder. At the same time i was exposed to the reality on the streets. I was able to look at it and learn to live and walk through it. Read more>>

Neta Kanny | Scholar & Language Enthusiast

I was born in Israel but moved to the United States as a young child. As an immigrant with Mizrahi and Ashkenazi migratory family histories in the Jewish diaspora, movement, language, and identity have always been at the core of my personal story and continue to shape and impact my academic and professional experiences and careers. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student of Literary, Cultural, and Linguistic Studies with a focus on Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Miami (UM), where I research transnational and diasporic cultural productions across the Latin American region related to the Venezuelan migrant crisis. I also teach Spanish and Portuguese to UM students, aiming to impart my love for language and culture to our world’s future global citizens. Read more>>