To honor Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating by sharing stories of hope. Adria Perez is a partner in the Atlanta office. Her practice focuses on white collar criminal defense matters. Here’s her story (transcript below):

"My name is Adria Perez and I am a Partner on the White Collar Team in Atlanta. And thank you to the firm for celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and asking me to talk about my family, but also what we are hopeful for.

My family immigrated from Cuba in 1959 right after the revolution. My grandparents, my aunt, and my dad boarded a PanAm flight with just a suitcase and $20 between the four of them, and they left everything else behind, including family members, to start a new life in the United States.

What makes me hopeful is that when you come from an immigrant experience like that where you often talk about sacrifice and hope and faith and fighting for freedom, that my kids, and their kids, and their kids will have a better experience than what we had. And that’s really something that my family talks about often is making sure that the next generation and the generation after that has a better experience, can be even more successful in order to make sure that the decisions that were made in the past were worth it, and that we are leveraging every opportunity to become better and bigger and bolder

I know many of you have heard incredible immigrant stories, not just of Cuban immigrants, but others who have come to this country against all odds against every obstacle. And that’s one of the many things that I love about Hispanic Heritage Month, is that we really get to hear those kinds of stories from our colleagues. We really get to know who they are because we are all a sum of our parents and our grandparents and our family’s experiences and sacrifices and backgrounds. And that’s the best thing about months like these when we are celebrating each other and really getting to know what’s at the core of each and every one of us. And so, thank you so much to the firm for this opportunity. Thank you for letting me talk a little bit about my family. And I am excited to hear more about my colleagues and who they are and what their families have experienced, so thank you."