Lots of people say that their work is their life, but few mean it quite like Christina

Jimenez.

She's a dreamer.

She came to the U.S. as a teen,

and as the co-founder and executive director of United We Dream, she had a hand in President

Obama's signing DACA. In fact, her organizing around the issue earned her a genius grant

from the MacArthur Foundation. And now, she's getting ready to move beyond that calling.

She's here, and I'm eager to hear about drawing a line between the personal and the professional

when your work is fighting for your life.

Christina, so good to see you.

Oh, great to be here with you.

Thanks so much.

13 years old, you immigrated to Queens with your family from Ecuador.

Later found out you were undocumented.

So much of your work has relied on telling your own story.

What aspects of the story have you been holding back on?

I really appreciate that question because in the work that I have been doing in immigrant rights,

so much of the work, it's my story, it's my experience,

and relieving the experience of growing up

undocumented, and as I've done more storytelling, which I have learned to love, I am tapping

into aspects of who I am and my lived experience that it it's not the typical, perhaps, story that the media

has created around what an immigrant young person is or a dreamer. For example, one of the

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