Denisce Palacios, an international business and political science senior at UTRGV, is among 19 other college students from across the state who will serve as social media ambassadors at the 2019 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
The ninth annual, three-day festival, which begins today, is one of the largest political gatherings where current politics and policies that affect Texas communities, schools and citizens’ work and daily lives are addressed, according to its website.
As a social media ambassador, Palacios will share information on her social media platforms to keep her audience informed on panels and events she attends. She applied for the position after seeing an ad on Facebook.
“It’s about sharing information that is, I guess, not readily available to everyone, although it absolutely should be and turning it into digestible blurbs with little, informative tweets,” she said in an interview with The Rider earlier today.
The event will feature a diverse lineup of speakers, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, among others, according to the website.
Palacios said she is most interested in learning about the criminal justice panels and hearing from keynote speaker Castro.
“I’m really excited to be able to listen to him in person and be in the same room where he’ll be talking about issues that matter to him,” she said.
Palacios encourages those interested in politics, regardless of their major, to become involved.
“I 100% recommend that more people apply to these things because there’s a lot of opportunities that we’re just not aware of and we just don’t see unless someone else does them,” she said.
Palacios will serve as a social media ambassador for the remainder of the 2019 event, which concludes Saturday.
For event updates, follow Palacios at @deniscepalacios on Twitter.
