What happens when we love the idea of a community more than the community itself? As a Puerto Rican raised in the South, Grace Sotomayor-Mantri says she often felt like she didn’t belong. Now she uses her platform as an educator to love her community and to model cultural awareness and inclusiveness.

Grace Sotomayor-Mantri is a teacher at St. Andrew’s School in Savannah, Georgia who came with her family at a young age to the United States, spending her formative years in Richmond Hill, Georgia. After graduating college, she taught English and Spanish in Poland for two and a half years.