Alicia Mara
1st Year MLIS Archival Student at UCLA
MY BACKGROUND
I have over nine years of experience in digital media, marketing, and project management. I am currently the Co-Founder and COO at Levitate Style, where I oversee day-to-day operations, execute campaigns for major brands, and manage digital content creation. Throughout my career, I have worked in both corporate and non-profit sectors with a specialized focus on refugee resettlement, Corporate Social Responsibility, and advancing human rights through Living Wage initiatives.
As a lifelong learner, I completed a Digital Humanities course that covered how institutions like museums, libraries, and archives utilize digitized collections by converting books and other artifacts into machine-readable data. I used tools like command line functions and Voyant to interpret the text corpus. This experience led me to explore the intersection of advancing human rights and digital asset management. I began volunteering for a non-profit that obtains customary land rights for indigenous communities. During my time there, I cataloged, digitized, and created metadata for over 600 items, solidifying my enthusiasm for the archival field.
I am currently enrolled at UCLA pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree focusing on archival studies. I am passionate about exploring the intersection of digital humanities and archival practices to understand better how we archive, represent, and remember history.