Candy Marshall is the president of TheDream.US. Candy brings a lifelong commitment to equity – through her philanthropic leadership in the Pacific Northwest and her work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to her current support and advocacy for Dreamers.

Ms. Marshall joined the TheDream.US after serving eight years as a leader at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As chief human resources officer, Ms. Marshall led the expansion of the foundation and then joined the Global Health Programs where she led the implementation of a comprehensive plan to implement and improve the effectiveness of the Foundation’s 25+ global programs with over 500 people and a $3.0B annual budget. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, Ms. Marshall was executive vice president and general counsel of WRQ, Inc. – a northwest technology firm.

Ms. Marshall is a philanthropic leader in the Pacific Northwest. She currently serves on the board of the Seattle Children’s Hospital and the National College Access Network. She has previously served on several other nonprofit boards including the Washington Global Health Alliance, the Seattle Arts and Sciences Academy, the YMCA of Greater Seattle, the YUSA Strategic Initiatives Fund, and Seattle City Club.

Ms. Marshall earned a law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law, with distinction, Order of the Coif, and a bachelor’s degree in public administration with an emphasis in criminal justice.

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Maria Gabriela (“Gaby”) Pacheco is a nationally recognized immigrant rights leader. As an immigrant with a mix-status family, she’s experienced first-hand the intricacies and difficulties immigrant families face in the US. In 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided her home and attempted to silence her. Her parents and sister were put in deportation proceedings. Since the early 2000s, she’s been central to the advocacy of immigration and immigrant rights, and in 2010, with three other undocumented students, they led the Trail of Dreams, a four-month walk from Miami to Washington, DC. She is credited for spearheading the efforts that led to the announcement of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

At the age of eight, Pacheco immigrated to the United States with her family from Guayaquil, Ecuador. On April 22, 2013, Pacheco became the first undocumented Latina to testify in front of Congress, speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the urgent need for immigration reform. Pacheco has received numerous accolades; Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30: in Education, 40 Under 40: Latinos in American Politics, and 2015 she received a Doctoral Degree in Humanities Honoris Causa from The New School. Pacheco was profiled in Elle magazine alongside America Ferrera, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick and others for a feature production on the world’s most accomplished 30-year-old women.

Gaby holds an Associate of Arts degree in Music Education, an Associate of Science degree in Early Childhood Education, and a BA in Special Education K-12 from Miami Dade College.

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Hyein Lee is driven by the power of research and evaluation to build evidence-based narratives for immigrant and higher education equity.

She first learned about the necessity of rigorous data collection and management in supporting programs serving marginalized populations while working at the YMCA in Flushing, Queens. There, she analyzed benchmarks of success for immigrant students. Since then, Hyein’s work has focused on leading quantitative and qualitative assessment of programs promoting college access and success, such as TheDream.US and the CUNY Start-ASAP Foster Care Initiative, at the City University of New York’s Office of Research, Evaluation & Program Support.

Hyein came to the United States at the age of 17 from South Korea. She received a B.A. in History from New York University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her research focuses on undocumented students in higher education.

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Sadhana Singh was born in Guyana and immigrated to the United States with her family at age 13. She grew up in Georgia where she was barred from attending college due to her undocumented status. A DACA recipient, Sadhana was awarded TheDream.US Scholarship in 2014 and she enrolled at Trinity Washington University at the age of 28.

At Trinity, Sadhana co-founded and served as president of The Dreamers Alliance, a campus organization that advocates for Dreamers and the immigrant community. She has told her story in publications like The Washington Post and the New York Times, and made appearances on Al Jazeera and MSNBC. In March 2018, she gave a TEDx Talk, sharing her journey through three lives, at the College of William and Mary. Throughout her time as an undergrad, she completed seven internships, including one at TheDream.US in her sophomore year.

She graduated from Trinity in May 2018 with a BA in Communication and a minor in International Affairs. As a first-generation college student and the first woman in her family to earn a degree, her experiences thus far have fostered her passion and commitment towards access to education, especially for girls and women. After living undocumented in the US for 19 years and facing numerous barriers to progress, she relocated to Toronto, Canada in June 2019.

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Elena has devoted the last five year of her career to helping low-income, first-generation students go to college – managing over 35 local, regional, national, and international scholarship programs. Elena has worked collaboratively with scholarship providers and colleges and universities to design and implement scholarship programs that meet the needs of the students they serve. She has provided the full panoply of management services from program design through application management, selection of finalists, award payment, and student and parent outreach. Her wealth of knowledge makes her a leading expert in scholarship management.

Before working as a scholarship management services provider, Elena spent over twenty years in the hospitality and retail management industries. It was her experience in these industries that enabled her to hone her servant leader mentality.

Elena is an ardent and active voice for our Scholars – and doing all that we can to support them in a successful college journey. While her talents are vast, it is her attention to detail, calmness under pressure, and an incredible ability to retain and recall vast amounts of information that make Elena stand out.

Elena holds an Associate of Arts Degree from Brevard Community College (now Eastern Florida State College) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration – Music Business from Belmont University.

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Originally from Chile, Camila Salkov immigrated to the US at the age of 16 for the sole purpose of gaining a better education. She is a TheDream.US scholar, completing her Bachelor of Science in Accounting with a minor in Business Administration at Trinity Washington University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. She continued her education at Fitchburg State University where she earned her Masters of Business Administration in Management.

Camila has experience working for large financial firms where she learned the importance of financial oversight and identifying potential areas of improvement in operations. A passion for data analysis and interpretation has provided her with the ability to embrace her leadership skills. As a dreamer, an experienced financial consultant and an investment banking expert, she brings a diverse background to her professional endeavors.

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Melanny Buitron was born in Quito, Ecuador, and immigrated to Chicago, Illinois at one-year-old.

In college she was involved and took leadership roles in multiple student organizations such as Student Government Association, Undocumented Resilient, and Organized (URO), and Latin America Student Organization (LASO). She was honored to accept a Title V capstone opportunity as lead intern at the Wright College Humboldt Park campus to roll out a strategic plan that would develop and establish resources and support for undocumented students. Among other highlights in that role, she was proud to personally design a first-ever Monarch Butterfly symbol that was used widely across the City Colleges of Chicago to create safe, welcoming environments for undocumented students. Simultaneously, she was honored to serve as the first undocumented Student Representative on the City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees. She also seized other  opportunities to intern at multiple civic-oriented organizations such as, Chicago Votes, and in the office of Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.

A DACA recipient, she holds an Associate of Arts degree from Wilbur Wright College – City Colleges of Chicago. Buitron was awarded TheDream.US scholarship and  graduated debt-free from Northeastern Illinois in May of 2019 with a BA in Business Administration.

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Vernisa Donaldson is committed to helping college programs best serve students with the power of data-driven decision-making. She believes that good data practices and program evaluation are integral tools for creating opportunities to access and succeed in higher education for marginalized students. She is also interested in promoting student voices and perspectives in her work.

Vernisa has dedicated the last seven years to working in partnership with college success programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) that support STEM students in middle and high school (CUNY Tutor Corps), students in foster care (CUNY Foster Care Initiative), and formerly incarcerated college students (John Jay’s College Initiative) to conduct multi-year evaluations and provide data collection, management, and analysis support to inform day-to-day decision-making. Her work on these projects has also contributed to the field of higher education research and practice for marginalized students through reporting about programmatic practices, outcomes, and lessons learned.

She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.S. in Applied Social Research with a focus on public policy research from Hunter College.

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Nicole Wesley has over 13 years of professional experience in higher education and has spent the past 8 years focusing on career education and development.  In her past role as the Director of Career Services at Nevada State College, Nicole focused on scaling and democratizing career education and services for all students while helping build students’ career confidence and social capital. Nicole is passionate about assisting undocumented students with their career advising needs and has created career development resources and opportunities specifically for undocumented students.  Nicole also served as a Career Services Liaison to TheDream.US Scholars and sits on the National Association of Colleges & Employers’ Serving Undocumented Students subcommittee.

Nicole received her Master of Education degree from Arizona State University and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Concordia College – Moorhead.

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Chris Aviles was born and raised in the Mott Haven area of the South Bronx. Growing up in a marginalized and underserved community, he grew a passion for empowering disadvantaged youth get access to higher learning. He believes education provides a pathway to increase the quality of life of our minority communities.

Before joining TheDream.US team, Chris spent 20 years working in higher education, within the City University of New York (CUNY). Throughout his years in CUNY, he supported students in the Department of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College, which has been designate both a Minority Serving (MSI) and Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). After several years serving the students and faculty at John Jay, he took a position working in the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Guttman Community College – CUNY. In this role, he was able to use his years of experience to create a foundation for the newly established college, and helped usher in the first incoming class ever at Guttman. His final tenure at CUNY was spent at Hunter College, where he managed programs supporting vulnerable students in need and served as the Scholar Advisor for TheDream.US Scholarship Program.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College – City University of New York.

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Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Maria immigrated to the United States with her family in search of a
better future and education. Maria has devoted her career to working in the higher education sector,
with experience in the operations and management areas, beginning with her work in college
bookstores in both Florida and New York, and most recently as Associate Director of Finance and
Operations in the Division of Student Affairs at Hunter College.

In her previous role, she was responsible for managing budgets and financial operations of multiple
departments and programs, and collaborating with college staff and administrators to ensure that
operations obtained the necessary funds and resources to be able to meet the student’s and college’s
needs.

Throughout her career in higher education, she has obtained first-hand knowledge about the difficulties
that undocumented, immigrant, and underrepresented students experience traversing the system,
giving her a firm grasp on the day-to-day obstacles they have to overcome to succeed in their academic
and professional goals.

Maria holds a Master of Public Administration degree from Baruch College – City University of New York,
and a Bachelor of Political Science from the University of Florida.

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