Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

In honor of Women’s History Month, The Cardinal will feature prominent and/or historical women, living or dead, who advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, for a positive future, eliminating bias and discrimination. The Cardinal is proud to celebrate women who work for basic inclusion, equality and fairness.

Natally Leon, Staff Writer

March 24, 2025

Someone that has majorly fought for gender equality is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez also known as AOC.

Cortez was born on October 13, 1989, in the Bronx, New York. She went to Boston University after moving to Yorktown Heights and graduated with honors. After being successful in school, she became an activist but also worked as a waitress and bartender. She’s very outspoken and won’t ever back down on what she has to say. She’s been an American politician activist since 2019 and in the past five years, she’s accomplished so much and has succeeded in getting her voice heard and making the changes she thinks are needed.

She worked as a waitress at a taqueria in New York in 2017 while also running her campaign so of course money was tight early on in her career. She knew as a woman who’s not wealthy, it wouldn’t be easy to succeed in her career but that didn’t stop her. If anything it pushed her even more. Her motivation to keep pushing through these rough times was knowing that one day she’d be able to make a change in society whether it was big or small, as long as it got through one person’s ears. She knew she’d have to work 10 times harder than her opponents and use different tactics to get where she wanted to be.

Later on Cortez became the youngest woman and Latina in history elected to serve in Congress which that title alone has inspired so many women. It showed that women can be just as successful as men if not even more successful. She’s done her best to stop oppression against women and especially women of color. Many love her for standing up to men and always having her facts right but she also gets online and makes sure the internet knows she means business. She’s not scared to fact check people and get them to see her views and opinions on what she thinks is right whether it’s gender equality, abolishing ICE, or giving a voice to the LGBTQ community.

About the Contributor

Natally Leon, Staff Writer

Natally Leon is a sophomore at Hoover High School. Natally enjoys reading fictional books and writing about basically anything. She loves cats but isn’t the biggest fan of dogs. She hopes to be very successful and rich in the future. Her plan to make this dream a reality is to work hard and go straight to college after high school. Her biggest role model is the strongest, smartest, most hardworking woman she knows, her mom. She looks up to her mom and hopes to be just as kind and hardworking as her when she’s older. She looks up to her siblings too. They all work for the life they want and they travel to a lot of cool places. Her family is her biggest motivation. They keep her from failing, support her, and always remind her to keep her head up no matter what. She’s not too sure what she wants to work in yet but once she finds what’s for her, she’ll do everything in her power to be successful in it, and having so much support from her loved ones will make it easier to succeed. Her favorite foods are menudo, buldak noodles, and breadsticks from Olive Garden. Her favorite drinks are water, sprite, and sometimes Dr. Pepper. She enjoys hanging out with her friends and going to Starbucks or the mall. When she’s not around her friends, she’s at home with her cat and her family either baking or playing video games with her siblings. She thinks that we can make a change in the world by keeping our planet clean and picking up trash from the floor even if it’s not ours. This is our earth so we have to keep it nice and clean. She also believes society should be less judgy, instead of being ugly to someone and ruining their day, try to make them feel good about themselves. There’s no reason we should be bringing each other down, we’re all human and we’re all living for the first time.