The best way to get to know Maritza Flores is to follow her on Instagram. Maritza is in her first year in the Los Angeles Campus Business Psychology Ph.D. Program – following up quickly on her Business Psychology Master’s degree. She’s already a full-time HR professional serving as an HR Senior Business Partner for KDC/One Cosmetic Laboratories of America, LLC in Chatsworth, CA.
But the student and HR professional side of Maritza is only a small part of who she is. When you follow Maritza on social media, you’ll get to know a young woman with a powerful story who has overcome more than her share of life’s challenges, ones that started even before she was born.
I’m a daughter of an immigrant mother. Her story is very inspirational to me because she was tricked into coming into this country to work for a woman who basically kept her enslaved for two years. She eventually escaped and found work in sewing factories.
I was fifteen when my mom decided to go back to Mexico. She left and went to live in Tijuana. During that time, I refused to go. I said, “I don’t know where I’m going, Mom, but I am not going to Mexico because I worked too hard.” If I went, I knew it was going to ruin my plans because I wanted to go to college.
I understood at the age of thirteen that I wanted to go to college. That’s when I first learned about it. Every step of my education was self-driven because there was really no guidance or information available to me. It was kind of me just paving my own way. My mom has a second grade education and didn’t really understand my desire to pursue higher education. My reason for wanting to go to college was basically to escape from the life that we lived.
We had an abusive father. I have six siblings and there’s five of us that had an abusive father. He was taken to prison and we were taken into foster care. We’re finally opening up about it and just healing as a family and moving forward. I’m very proud of the growth that I’ve seen in all of my siblings and my family. My mom seems to be living with so much peace in her heart. And although we’re not millionaires or professionals, at least we’re happy considering everything that we’ve had to endure.
My siblings are all from different backgrounds in the sense that I have two brothers that were in and out of jail. They were both gang-related and involved in drugs. Now they are sober and are doing their best to become good role models for their kids. So much has evolved in my life and in my siblings’ life. Now we talk on a daily basis. We reflect on the hardships that we endured as kids and we can finally talk about it, because we never did.
I’m currently in the PhD. Business Psychology, Consulting Track Program. I also got my Master’s in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, both at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. I’m so grateful for the program. It’s given me so much opportunity to grow, with not only my confidence, but also my skill sets.
As I continue to grow within the next two or three years as a student for the PhD. program, I know that by the time I’m done with the program, I’ll be well equipped with my experience and my knowledge and I just keep building on that. Once I graduate, I hope to publish a book. My dissertation is focused on women of color and the need for resiliency. That’s the direction that I’m headed in so I can become a subject matter expert.
Some advice that I would give someone going through similar struggles is to have faith in your own process and trust your vision. Sometimes it’s going to feel like you’re doing it alone and most likely you will be going through your process alone, just understand and have patience and be kind to yourself.
Instagram: @ritz_flores
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