Lily Villa

Applied Anthropology for community organizing and human services

I grew up in Boise, Idaho, in a middle class, mainly white neighborhood. Even as early as age seven, I remember being struck by the lack of cultural and ethnic diversity around us. My exposure to other cultures was limited to television, books, and the few people of color who lived in Boise. I was always curious to see other people’s homes, food, how and when they ate at the dinner table. I was fascinated by customs, languages, and beliefs different from my own, and I felt my world expanding every time I learned something new. When I turned ten, my family and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, which was about as dramatically different from Boise as I could have imagined: environmentally, culturally, and ethnically. I soon made many friends from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, including Nepalese, Mexican-American, French Canadian, Korean, Serbian, and Navajo, that I likely never would have encountered in my previous life. I couldn’t help myself: I had to learn everything I could about them, their languages and cultures, and their perspectives on American lifeways. Luckily, my friends were just as interested in these topics as I was and were happy to learn along with me. At age 13, I found an old, cloth-bound copy of Bernard and Pedraza’s “Native Ethnography: A Mexican Indian Describes His Culture” and was captivated. With that book I discovered that my passion for people, cultures, and communities had a name: anthropology. I could not get enough information on anthropology after that: I would meet with friends and strangers to work on amateur ethnographies about the people around me; for fun, I would ride public transit so that I might meet new people and learn about their lives. These amateur ethnographic activities made it clear to me that anthropology could teach me to gather as many perspectives as possible in order to understand the world, to grow, learn, connect, and help build a thriving local and global community. Anthropology provided me with the tools to see the world through a different lens.
During my undergraduate career at Arizona State University, I read many classic ethnographies and greatly enjoyed my studies in socio-cultural anthropology, in which I excelled. In my sophomore year I was hired by the City of Tempe Social Services division as a youth programming assistant, where I worked in drug and alcohol prevention, educational programming, and enrichment programs for youth aged 5–18. I recognized almost immediately that the city and the social services field could greatly benefit from applied anthropological theory and methodology, especially in terms of ethnographic interview methods, cultural sensitivity, and cultural relativity. From that point on, I designed my academic and professional careers to build toward my goal of becoming an anthropologist. I saw that my anthropological training enabled me to augment my colleagues’ training in sociology, counseling, and social work, making it easier to achieve our programs’ goals. I found the ethnographic interview and participatory methods that I learned in my courses were very useful for engaging with people of diverse ages, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. My anthropological training gave me an understanding of hegemonic structures present within educational and governmental institutions, and more importantly, it helped me understand and appreciate the ways in which people of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds reacted to these power structures. This proved very useful in serving children and families sensitively and effectively. In 2012, I was promoted to a Social Services Coordinator position and since then, I have had the honor of working with incredibly talented and capable youth in my capacity as an advisor to the City of Tempe Mayor’s Youth Advisory Commission. There I work with over 60 exceptional middle school and high school students and have found that though they had the intelligence, creativity, and drive to achieve outstanding things for their community, my students often felt stymied because they went unheard by adults. It was this observation that inspired me to return to ASU and begin my graduate studies so that I could better understand youth culture and how it can be leveraged to help communities grow and thrive.
In 2014, I enrolled as a general studies graduate student at ASU in order to further my anthropological education. I took classes in historical trauma and American hegemonic structures with Dr. Tenille Marley, globalization and anthropological theory with Dr. Takeyuki Tsuda, and ethics of anthropology with Dr. Hjorleifur Jonsson. I not only received A’s in all of my classes but was able to apply the lessons I learned to my job. I believe the skills I learned in my graduate courses directly contributed to my next promotion, this time to a Senior Social Services Coordinator position. In this capacity, I used the theoretical and methodological information from my courses to develop a college access program for Tempe area high school students. I was able to recognize the structural processes that often inhibit students’ abilities to access and be successful in postsecondary education. Since its inception, the program has expanded by 800% in volunteers, clients, and services offered to City of Tempe youth. I realized that much of the success of this program was due to using my anthropological training to empower youth and adults to be understanding and collaborative towards common goals. However, I realized that if I wanted to expand upon and strengthen my work with youth, I would need a greater and more nuanced understanding of youth culture and applied anthropological theory and methodology. I believe that Arizona State University is the ideal place to pursue these goals.
My goal as a doctoral student at Arizona State University is to study community building efforts in youth culture, and specifically how identity, social media technologies, and global youth culture can help develop youth movements for healthy, connected, thriving communities worldwide. I believe Dr. Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda’s research into globalization and Dr. H. Russell Bernard’s research into technology and social change and social network analysis will greatly benefit my studies. I also believe that Dr. Alissa Ruth’s research into immigrant youth would be greatly beneficial to my graduate studies. The Department of Anthropology offers an excellent cross-disciplinary graduate program, one which I am confident will greatly enhance my understanding of socio-cultural anthropology. I believe that Arizona State University is the ideal place to pursue my passion of using applied anthropological methods and theory to help young people and their communities organize, grow, and thrive. Thank you for your consideration and please contact me if you have any questions.

Hiking, biking, swimming, reading, drawing, film