Growing up in Peru, Mariela Noles Cotito LLM’12 did not have a comprehensive awareness of her African ancestry. She identified most strongly with her Japanese grandmother and had little concept of herself as an Afro-Peruvian woman. Only when she was in law school, where she was one of just two Afro-Peruvian students in the department, did this change. “I discovered what it meant to be Black in Peru,” she says. Today, Noles Cotito is a Professor at the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima and also works as a consultant to the national government on issues related to minority rights. Read more at the link in our profile. #pennlaw #pennlawlife #pennlawalumni