The story behind the yes
I’m a blind journalist, speaker, and accessibility consultant from Uruguay. I write about disability and access for outlets like the BBC, Foreign Policy, and Business Insider, advise destinations on guide dog access, and have spoken on stages worldwide. This is the story of how I got here, starting with the doctors who said I wouldn’t.
They said I wouldn’t make it
I was born at 25 weeks gestation. Doctors in Uruguay saved my life, but the oxygen that kept me alive took my sight.
My parents were told that my life would be full of difficulties; experts defined my limits before I took my first step.
They were right about the blindness. They were wrong about everything else.
By 17, I was proving them wrong
When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill, I went online. At 17, I started pitching stories to international media outlets. No one knew me. A hundred and fifty rejections later, my work appeared in HuffPost, Business Insider, and Foreign Policy, all of it written from my bedroom in Uruguay.
That tenacity earned me a full scholarship to Harvard University.
From Harvard Yard to the United Nations
At Harvard, I studied government and human rights, and I realized that policies are often written by people who have never experienced the problems they are trying to solve.
I took that perspective to the United Nations and to stages across three continents, to go beyond “awareness” and start building real infrastructure for inclusion.
I don’t want a seat at the table. I want to redesign the room.
The people who believed first
My parents didn’t listen to the experts who said I couldn’t. They listened to me. When I wanted to navigate my neighborhood alone they taught me how. When I wanted to write for international publications at 17, they didn’t tell me to “be realistic”, they asked what I needed.
They saw possibility instead of limitation. Now I work with organizations that want to do the same for their teams and students.
30 countries, one mission
After graduating from Harvard, I set myself a mission: visit 30 countries with my guide dog, a black Labrador named Indio, before he retires.
We’ve already been to 19. We changed the rules in Egypt, becoming the first guide dog team to work legally in the country.
I’m traveling to push the boundaries of what’s possible with a guide dog, to collect stories from blind people worldwide, to spotlight what’s working in accessibility—and change what isn’t.
People are used to saying “blind people with guide dogs can’t do this.” I’m proving them wrong, one border at a time.
Because when you expand what’s possible for one person, you expand it for everyone.
What I do now
I’m a working journalist. My reporting and essays have appeared in the BBC, Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, HuffPost, Business Insider, and Slate, and my beat runs wider than disability: I write about access, technology, and AI, from what it takes to cross a border with a guide dog to what machine intelligence means for the people it claims to help.
I advise tourism boards, hotels, and cultural institutions on guide dog access and accessibility you can measure at the front door, because a policy that says “welcome” means nothing if the staff still turns us away.
And I take those lessons to different rooms. Fortune 500 companies bring me in for their teams, schools for their students, and organizations to help amplify the messages they care about.
Ready to bring this perspective to your organization?
Let’s talk about keynotes, workshops, or consulting that actually moves the needle.