INTO THE FIRE
Aurora Pribram-Jones ’09 acknowledges her life hasn’t always been easy. But that certainly hasn’t stopped her from becoming a remarkable researcher. Written by Ashley Festa | Photos by Seth Affoumado
HROUGH HER AWARD-WINNING RESEARCH, AURORA PRIBRAM-JONES ’09 HAS
discovered her passion. But, her truest self—that’s a bit more elusive. Her journey began as a teenager. In the 1980s and early ’90s, she was transferred from her East Palo Alto, California, neighborhood to a high school in the affluent city of Palo Alto. Despite issues of crime and drugs in her home city, she says she felt most like herself there and struggled with the deep cultural and social divide she felt between the two worlds. “If you’re a transfer student or a scholarship student, you often hear about how you’re different than ‘the rest of them,’ about how inspiring it is that you’ll be ‘more than where you came from,’ that sort of thing,” Pribram-Jones says. “Which is horribly cruel and dismissive of your identity, your home, your family, and all of those valuable pieces of self and community.” At age 15, Pribram-Jones dropped out of school and moved to Southern California to reset her life. When she returned to East Palo Alto a year later, her search for self and where she belonged intensified.
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HARVEY MUDD HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE COLLEGE