Member Spotlight: Araceli Cruz-Marks
What is your industry or area of expertise?
I majored in Molecular Biology; I wanted to go into AIDS research because I had a family member who was a product of the AIDS epidemic in SF. Just watching him go through that experience and being at his deathbed put a passion in my heart to understand more about what it was.
When I started working in biotech, I quickly realized that I didn't care much for it but I did love marketing. I was thrown into a position where I was covering for someone on maternity leave and ended up running the marketing department fresh out of college. I went back to school to get my MBA in marketing. Fast forward 15 years and I now consider myself a marketing and communications expert, and that’s what landed me with BlackFemaleProject.
Why do you believe in the mission of BlackFemaleProject?
I believe in it because I have a Black daughter, and Black women are held to a completely different standard as soon as they walk into the room. What I try to teach her – not being Black myself– is that it’s going to be doubly as hard for her to be Black and a woman. So she’s going to have to make room at the table for herself and not be afraid to use her voice.
What brought you to BlackFemaleProject?
I met with Precious in late 2020; I was looking for a change in my life and my career. I came on to PJS Consultants full-time and slowly started getting more and more into BlackFemaleProject. There was a huge need for client management and consultant support for PJS, and on the BlackFemaleProject side, I managed the fund development work group and coordinated tracking and the fiscal sponsorship program.
How has BlackFemaleProject impacted you personally?
It has shown me how welcoming the BlackFemaleProject team is. At first, I was concerned about how I could work for BlackFemaleProject as a Latina who isn’t a Black woman, but I never felt for one second that I wasn't welcomed because of that. I love that, no matter what my background is, I felt supported as part of the team. And I felt privileged to work among such an amazingly talented group of women with their own stories and their own trajectories that I could learn from and help my daughter aspire to follow their lead.
What BlackFemaleProject content or offering have you found most resonant?
The branding, the color palette, everything is so beautiful and welcoming that the content is never lost because it’s visually appealing. I know that the team works hard to do both–have strong rich content and dynamic beautiful visuals at the same time. My favorite is the Wellness Calendar. I need like 20 of them, please! I love to pass them out.
Bio:
Araceli Cruz-Marks is a first generation college graduate, dog mom, and mother of a blended, Afro-Latinx family. She is a San Francisco/Bay Area native, at home in Sacramento since 2003. Araceli has 20 years of experience in marketing and communications, executive level support, and project management. Her career path spans various industries including biotech, higher education, and nonprofits.
Araceli has an MBA in marketing, a bachelors in molecular biology, and is DEI certified. Araceli loves to sing, especially worship and praise, and has a passion for serving historically marginalized communities and youth, amplifying the voices of others with a can-do, solution-oriented attitude.
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