When Luis Hernandez got to USC, he noticed something: Unlike in his native Brooklyn, now when he looked around he didn’t often see people who looked or acted like he did.

“Being a person of color has been an interesting experience for me,” Hernandez said. “I’m the first person in my family to graduate high school and also go to college, so it was a big jump for me coming here to USC. Although USC is a very beautiful place and I love my school, you also notice the inconsistencies and the lack of inclusion sometimes.”

To combat this, during his freshman year Hernandez and some friends began Motivate and Empower, a group that aims to both support students and help them create change on their campus. The group now has about 30 people, including students in their mentorship program, in which upperclassmen are paired with underclassmen to help guide them through their time at USC.

Another initiative Motivate and Empower has is partnering with USC Shoah Foundation. Currently, Hernandez interns with the Communications Department of the Institute through his role in Motivate and Empower.

“I came to USC Shoah Foundation to not only help [the Institute] with their education and making their educational platforms more diverse, but also to learn more about it so I, as a member of Motivate and Empower, could make the campus here at USC more diverse,” he said. 

As an intern, Hernandez edits videos and finds and assembles clips for both IWitness and the Institute’s website, which involves watching testimony from the Visual History Archive extensively. Because of this, Hernandez said his time at the Institute has helped him to understand diversity in a new way.

“Working here at USC Shoah Foundation has allowed me to open my eyes to tolerance, to understanding different stories and just opening my heart in general to people,” he said. “I think that’s what’s so special about testimonies: the ability to connect with someone.”

"When you listen to a story, you take pieces of that story and you keep them with you"This has helped Hernandez, who hopes someday to be a late night talk show host and work in front of the camera, on a more personal level.

“When you listen to a story, you take pieces of that story and you keep them with you,” he said. “I’ve been taking stories, and I carry them with me. They make me stronger and they further my narrative, too.”

One story that has stuck with Hernandez in particular is that of Holocaust survivor Adela Ackerman, who saved her sister multiple times during the Holocaust.

“She really went through a lot, but she kept her sister really close to her,” he said. “That was really sentimental to me because I have a younger brother… so I really respect her as an older sibling.”