Mariel White Santillán was born in Beloit Wisconsin to a Mexican mother and an American father. Since she was a young girl, Mariel spoke both Spanish and English. When she began to go to school, her mother found ways to motivate her to speak Spanish at home using games. When Mariel entered elementary school, she became friends with a girl who spoke Spanish because her family was from Mexico. They spent a lot of time together, listened to music in Spanish and danced; this helped her improve the language and become closer to Mexican culture. 

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In middle school, Mariel took some basic Spanish classes although she had already learned most of the content with her mother. Looking for a challenge, when she entered high school, she signed up to take an Advanced Placement (AP) test in order to study Spanish grammar and become accustomed to reading and writing in Spanish. In particular, the AP exam helped improve her academic writing. She obtained a good grade and this motivated her to keep looking for more opportunities. 

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Mariel was fortunate to travel often to Mexico and always had a very close relationship with her family there. She communicated with her cousins through WhatsApp and wanted to keep learning so she could talk to them. After graduating high school, Mariel studied sociology and global health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

While Mariel was a student in Madison she did not study Spanish, although she took a college level summer course in Mexico. During her 3rd year of college, she studied abroad for a year in Spain and all of her classes and homework were in Spanish. This was where she saw that her Spanish passed on to the next level. Mariel tells us that before she used Spanglish a lot because sometimes she did not know how to say something in Spanish and would change it to English. However, when she went to Mexico and during the time that she lived in Spain, she had to put in the effort to speak Spanish only. During her last year at the university, she played the violin in a Mariachi band and began collecting catrinas.

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After graduating from university, Mariel did an internship for three months at the National Institute of Psychiatry in Mexico City. She also took a summer course at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP, Spanish acronym) where she was eventually hired in May 2018. Having double citizenship and the ability to speak two languages opened more doors for her professional development. 

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At INSP, Mariel works with Dr. Simón Barquera as a research assistant and coordinator. She investigates subjects related to obesity prevention, focused on the food environment. In the last three years, she has collaborated in various scientific publications. She highlighted an article that she wrote about the approval and implementation of the new Warning Labels in Mexico, which informs consumers about healthy and unhealthy products in a quick and easy way. From May 2020 to April 2021, she coordinated a UNICEF project to develop a tool that is used to evaluate food publicity in supermarkets. Mariel mentioned that in the next months she will coordinate a project to evaluate supermarkets in various cities throughout Mexico. 

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In September 2021, Mariel began a Master’s Degree in Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology at the University of Texas A&M, although she continues working at the INSP. In the future, she would like to pursue a PhD and keep doing research in Mexico and with the Latinx population in the United States. Mariel says that Mexico is also a part of her and she does not plan to leave it. 

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Mariel believes that being bilingual can open many doors not only professionally, but also with social relationships with friends and family. It allows one to travel and work in other countries and use the ability to speak both languages to advocate for the community’s rights. Mariel advises youth who speak two languages to utilize the resources that they have at their disposal to improve their abilities and get involved in cultural activities. 

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