Pierre-Bravo
LIMA — Her life has taken her on a journey from Chile to Lima to in front of the cameras at MSNBC in New York City.
On Friday and Saturday, Daniela Pierre-Bravo will revisit a part of that journey when she returns to Lima for appearances at Lima Central Catholic and at Vibe Coffeehouse.
Pierre-Bravo was born in Chile, spending the first 11 years of her life there before moving with her parents and four younger siblings to Lima.
“My parents, I remember, were always working,” she said. “We were a typical immigrant family. My parents worked two or three jobs. I took it as an opportunity to really excel and take the chance of being here and trying to make the most of it.”
Getting settled in the community, Pierre-Bravo went to school at St. Gerard before completing high school at Lima Central Catholic in 2009, going from there to Miami University. She then went on to become part of the NBC Page program in New York City, getting involved with shows like “Saturday Night Live.” She then became a booking producer and then a reporter, working in that capacity for MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Coming back to Lima Central Catholic gives Pierre-Bravo the opportunity to help the LCC Educational Foundation give other opportunities to people who are in the position she once was in. Tickets for the event are $15 and are available at bit.ly/3DrVnJt or by calling the school at 419-222-4276. Those interested are encouraged to have tickets purchased by the end of the day Thursday.
“That is so important because I came from a family that really struggled, that worked really hard and still had a difficult time making ends meet,” she said. “We’ll be talking about my career and the importance of being someone in the community that has the ability to help because these people that you help and give them a leg up, they always come back and invest in the community in one way or another.”
Often being the only Latina in her social circle, be it growing up in school or going on to college, Pierre-Bravo often felt a sense of loneliness, a feeling that birthed a desire to tell stories of others in that same situation. That desire led her into journalism.
“I always wanted to be a storyteller,” she said. “I always wanted to have the opportunity to tell stories that I didn’t see reflected when I was the only Latina, I think, in my grade. A lot of the stories in my own community I didn’t see reflected. I think that if that had existed, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so lonely, at times.”
That experience was also the motivator for Pierre-Bravo’s new book, “The Other: How to Own Your Power at Work as a Woman of Color,” which she will be speaking about with Lima Mayor Sharetta Smith at 10 a.m. Saturday at Vibe Coffeehouse, 311 E. Market St., Lima.
Reach Craig Kelly at 567-242-0391 or on Twitter @cmkelly419.
