Valerie Mendoza—Community Voice
Valerie M. Mendoza received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
She works in the public humanities where her research focuses on the history of the Latinx
community in Kansas and the Midwest. For the last two years she has served as co-host of the
Big Idea, a monthly discussion sponsored by Humanities Kansas featuring African American
and Indigenous scholars from around the state. She is co-owner of the Other Roads Consulting,
a nonprofit history consulting firm whose mission is to uncover the buried histories of Brown and
Black folks so that people of color can see themselves represented in this country’s history and
gather strength from their collective past.