Former NRHS student - A Global Citizen

Luis Gabriel Sanchez – Senior at the University at Albany

Luis Gabriel Sanchez (Gabe) will be travelling as an observer/volunteer to Haiti this week with Dr. Robin Rose, Leadership Programs Director at Brown University (and former Dean of Students there). They will visit the Partners In Health program in Haiti. Zanmi Lasante (“Partners In Health” in Haitian Kreyol) is PIH’s flagship project – the oldest, largest, most ambitious, and most replicated. The small community clinic that first started treating patients in the village of Cange in 1985 has grown into the Zanmi Lasante (ZL) Sociomedical Complex, featuring a 104-bed, full-service hospital with an infectious disease center (the Thomas J. White Center), a women’s health clinic (Proje Sante Fanm), a laboratory, a pharmaceutical warehouse, a Red Cross blood bank and a dozen schools. On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake struck Haiti, killing over 250,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless. PIH’s staff in Haiti and around the world immediately launched into action, bringing emergency medical care and supplies to survivors.

Luis Gabriel Sanchez will graduate with a BA in May 2013 (finishing in 3 years) from the University at Albany - double majoring in Latin American & Globalization Studies. He has been on Dean's list since he began in the Fall 2010 (3.85 GPA; 3.94 in his majors).   

In 2012, he was awarded a Summer Internship with the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University.  He will be a Research Fellow there again this upcoming Summer. The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) was created at Fordham University in December 2001 to forge partnerships with relief organizations, offer rigorous academic and training courses at the graduate and undergraduate level, host symposia, and publish books relating to humanitarian affairs. The Institute enables humanitarian workers to develop relationships with the University and the international community in New York City.  

Gabe will be pursuing a PhD at the University at Albany (Latin American Studies). Gabe is the beneficiary of the Carson Carr Graduate Fellowship, Recipient of the 2013 Seth Spellman Academic Honors Award and was recently selected as a winner of the 2013 Presidential Undergraduate Research Award (just like his father did in the mid 1980’s) Gabe’s interest in Graduate school will revolve around issues of Indigenous Cosmology and “decolonization of self” as it has developed in the philosophy of “buen vivir”. He is seeking funding to travel to Ecuador to further his interest in this field.

Gabriel is the son of Wendy Rose Sanchez and Martin Sanchez Rojas from New Rochelle. His grandparents are Shirley Burn Rose (from Bristol, CT) and Robert Rose (d) & Benilda Rojas (from Ayacucho, Peru) and Jose Sanchez Casos (d). Martin is a graduate of the University at Albany (BA-Inter-American Studies in 1985 and MA-Anthropology in 1987; and a JD from the University at Buffalo School of Law in 1990). Martin previously worked with Texas Rural Legal Aid – farmworker and garment worker legal aid (and is now a Human Resources professional). Gabe’s mother Wendy majored in German & Spanish languages at the College of Wooster also obtaining an MA in Second Language Instruction at the University at Buffalo (she is a Spanish Teacher). Gabe’s younger brother Roberto Sanchez (Bobby) is a senior at New Rochelle High School (he will graduate in June 2013) and will be enrolled in the Fall 2013 at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College focusing in Music Production & Technology. Bobby is an accomplished soccer player, composer, chess player and arranger who incorporates varied music from around the world in his compositions (Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Santana, Eminem, Bob Marley and Immortal Technique). He plays the Guitar, Bass and is now proficient in the Charango, instrument of his grandmother’s birth home of Ayacucho, Peru.