Ann McGinley grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the third child in a family of four. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a lawyer. McGinley attended college and majored in Spanish. She earned a master’s degree and taught in Spain for five years. Her brother and his wife were lawyers and she decided to go back to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. McGinley did a two year clerkship for a federal judge, doing research and drafting opinions. She met her husband-to-be during this time and they moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Laura Taylor was born in New Haven, Connecticut and spent her childhood bouncing between New York and Ohio to follow her father’s career. Robert Cox, her father, was a businessman who attended Syracuse University on the Government-Issued Bill. Her mother, Lillian Cox was a concert pianist and college music professor. At the age of seventeen, Taylor received a scholarship to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Powell. Unfortunately, Dr.

Dr. Edith Fernandez is a native Las Vegan, a Chicana American. In the 1950s, her parents emigrated from Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico and joined family already residing in Las Vegas area since the 1920s. The Fernandez family of three children grew up in Charleston Heights as one of a very few Latinx families in the predominantly white community.

Alber Mora is an immigrant from Cuba who arrived in the United States through Miami, Florida. Mora’s father became persecuted by the Castro government where he worked, when Alber’s older brother was called to mandatory military service though he had a medical exemption. Due to this reason, the mora family decided to leave Cuba in a balsa (raft) risking their lives as many Cubans did to escape the oppression at the time.