Ashley Vazquez Romo, a Basic High School rising senior, poses in front of a Bank of America branch on West Charleston Boulevard Friday, July 16, 2021. Romo is one of four Nevada students selected in the Bank of America Student Leaders Program.
Monday, July 26, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Ashley Vazquez Romo wants to be a judge or a surgeon. Either way, she says, she’d be saving lives.
First, she’ll have to graduate from high school.
Vazquez Romo, 17, is headed into her senior year at Basic Academy of International Studies in the valedictorian position, eyes on a Stanford or Columbia university education with a résumé to get her there — and knowing where she comes from.
The high-achieving Las Vegas native has spent just the past few months learning about nonprofit management with the local Boys & Girls Clubs, interning with the American Chemical Society to learn about a possible vaccine to treat opioid addiction, serving as a U.S. Department of State youth ambassador to Ecuador and Colombia to learn how to alleviate homelessness in two continents, helping immigrants get COVID-19 vaccines and other pandemic relief resources, and registering people to vote even though she’s too young to cast a ballot herself.
Before moving to Henderson, she came up near Sunrise Manor in Las Vegas’ northeast side. Like many of her childhood neighbors, her parents were immigrants from Mexico. Both are in sales and now earning a middle-class income, giving Vazquez Romo privileges she wants to pay forward in communities like her own.
“It sounds cliché, but I was raised in a majority-immigrant community and it was really low-income,” she said. “I saw every day the people, the hard work that they put in.”
Registering voters with the civic organization Mi Familia Vota was one way to show people how to use their power, specifically among residents in the heavily Latino eastside. She personally signed up more than 100 voters within a couple of months by posting up at supermarkets, going door to door and walking up to people waiting at bus stops, using her fluency in English and Spanish (she also speaks conversational Mandarin and American Sign Language).
“We helped encourage them and empower them to use their voices because frankly, a lot of things that are being passed affect them, but they’re not the ones who are voting,” she said. “We see that Latinos are one of the lowest likely groups to vote. So I (was) just going out into communities and having meaningful conversations.”
Her work with the Boys & Girls Clubs has her helping with marketing, recruiting and programming for the kids at the Lied Memorial branch through her participation in the Bank of America Student Leaders program. She’s one of 300 student leaders nationwide and one of four in Clark County.
Al Welch, Bank of America Las Vegas president, said Vazquez Romo and her three peers were among more than 100 applicants just in the Vegas area. The others include: Nijel Braxton Murray, a recent graduate of Nevada State High School; Trelas Dyson IV, a recent graduate of Shadow Ridge High; and Belen Padilla, a recent graduate of Western High School.
“All are involved in the community, (and) have a very strong view about how to make the city a better place to live,” he said.
To that end, Vazquez Romo wants to one day start a nonprofit to help previously incarcerated and homeless youths get a college degree or join the workforce.
Stanford and Columbia are her own top schools but she’s careful to not have a “dream school” so she doesn’t get disappointed.
“I’m just happy to go to college,” she said. “My family didn’t go to college, so for me it’s like I’m setting an example for my younger sister, and then it’s like we’re making history for all of our ancestors.”
Her younger sister is 12 and passionate about immigrants’ rights. Her older sister studies government and foreign policy at Georgetown University.
In her spare time, Vazquez Romo reads and plays a little tennis. Not that she has a lot of spare time.
“But I like the work I do,” she said.
