Frida Lorena Medina Velázquez grew up in Mexico, whose public education system is dominated by Marxist thinking. In this context, free thinking is discouraged and considered as strange. But for Frida, the ideas of liberty are more compelling and provide a viable solution to the problems she sees around her. Through SFL, she says “I found a platform that allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and learn about more about myself. With SFL you get to practice what you learn and take action and that provides valuable experiences for your professional life.”
Frida is an exceptional speaker and community organizer who is leveraging the globalness of the liberty movement to bolster her activism efforts in Mexico and Latin America. Frida first got involved with Students For Liberty in 2015 and has since talked about liberty in front of hundreds of people in Mexico and across the world. Even in her early days as a coordinator, her leadership and oratory skills were shining through. Only two months after joining SFL, she gave her first speech to an auditorium of 150 people. Her public speaking skills are second only to her ability to connect with an audience.
This ability to communicate and connect with people has seen her traveling the world and building a network of young leaders in the global liberty movement. In 2017, she was awarded a scholarship by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to attend to a course at IAF in Gummersbach, Germany (2017), where she learned to design programs and plan more impactful events. In her home region, Latin America, Frida has participated in pro-liberty training programs at the Universidad de Guanajuato Summer School and also the Universidad de la Libertad in Bolivia.
Her outstanding work organizing events and mobilizing people for freedom has allowed her traveled to the USA, Spain and other countries for a variety of educational and professional training programs. Frida believes that Students For Liberty has been essential to helping her have this level of international experience, “With Students For Liberty, I have a network. When you have been to many countries and have developed a lot of contacts, it improves your professional life. It gives you credibility and allows you access to more opportunities.”
Back at home in Mexico, Frida has been working to make the ideas of liberty more mainstream, serving as the debate judge for a recent Youth Debate held by the National Electoral Institute of Mexico. She also got to address a group of extraordinary women in the Mexican Congress, where she talked about her experiences as a young female leader. She recently returned home after studying in Spain, on invitation by Universidad de Jaen, where she was doing research on public transportation.
On the role of SFL in shaping her career plans, Frida says that “SFL has been the pillar of my academic and professional development. Through SFL, I have learned more about economics, got a chance to volunteer in the community and traveled around the world to meet other young people fighting for liberty. If I had just stayed at home, I would not know there was a large global network of people behind me.”