Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez grew up in Tucson, AZ, a city that is only an hour away from the U.S. Mexico Border. At fifteen, her parents were forced to return to Mexico due to complications with their legal status. When this happened, Gutierrez stayed behind in the United States in order to pursue her education. Despite these tumultuous events, Gutierrez was eventually accepted to multiple Ivy League Universities after graduating from High School at the top of her class. In 2018, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics.

During her time at Penn, Gutierrez was featured on NPR’s Latino USA, and was selected as The Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) Scholar of the year in 2017. Gutierrez was also the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships including the U.S. Department of State Gilman Scholarship Program where she was selected to document her experience as a blogger and video correspondent during her time abroad in the U.K. Gutierrez was also selected to participate in competitive business programs put on by both Harvard and Stanford’s Business Schools.

From 2018 to May of 2021, Gutierrez worked as a Corporate and Investment Banking Analyst at Wells Fargo. In February of 2020, she was selected out of 1000 internal Wells Fargo applicants to participate in Wells Fargo’s Ignite partnership with the TED Institute. Her TED Talk recounts her story of finding opportunity and stability in the U.S. while examining flaws in narratives that simplify and idealize the immigrant experience. Within a month, her talk reached over a million views and led to a major book deal with St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan. In June of 2021, Gutierrez took on a new role in tech as a Rotational Product Manager at Facebook where she hopes to use her background and knowledge to empower communities.