Sonia Sotomayor is a Hispanic of Puerto Rican descent and a native of the Bronx, and the first Hispanic American to serve as a member of the Supreme Court. Sotomayor was born in 1954 in the New York City borough, where she grew up in a predominantly Catholic and Puerto Rican community. She made education her prime concern after her mother’s death when Sotomayor was only 9 years old.

Sotomayer graduated as the valedictorian from her high school. She soon began her studies at the University of Princeton with a full scholarship.  She then graduated from Princeton in 1976 after realizing that she wanted to be a student advocate. She went on to Yale Law School and graduated in 1979, and passed the New York Bar the next year. Years later after leaving the public sector to work for the private sector, she made history by being the first picked nominated for the U.S Supreme Court by President Obama in 2009.