Gonzalez,Ricardo

 Hello everyone!

    My name is Ricardo Gonzalez, my pronouns are he/him/his. I am a first-generation fourth-year undergrad student, double majoring in Economics and Chicano Studies. I was born in a small low-income town names Porterville, where Hispanics are the main demographic and poverty is seen across the community. This is what led me to pursue a degree in Economics as everything can be traced back to a root cause and one can perform an analysis to attempt to solve those issues. I've taking Chicano courses my four years here at UCLA and it was not until recently I decided to add it on as a major as I enjoy learning more and more about the issues that the Hispanic community faces. 

    My goal is to eventually have my own financial consultancy firm where I will aim to help impoverished communities such as the one, I come from and bring towards investments to the community through impact investments which is something my community along with many other communities desperately need. I'm hoping that having a background in both Economics and Chicano Studies helps me achieve this goal of mine so I can help better the lives of other students like me who live in these communities. 

    Last quarter I took a course called Chicanos in Film/video which focused on highlighting the great work performed by Hispanic stars. This class was very intriguing to me as I realized that there are many great Chicano films out there that people such as I have never heard of simply due to the fact that they are not pushed as hard by Hollywood since the main stars are Hispanic. That is why I decided to take this course, if there are many hidden gems in the film industry by Hispanics, I can't begin to imagine all the great art pieces created by Chicanx artists that I've never heard of.