One of the founders of the Women’s March, Carmen Perez, rose to national fame in 2017. But her path to get there was not without challenges—and she learned many lessons along the way. These lessons came as much from her forebears—leaders like Nane Alejandrez, the founder of Barrios Unidos, and Harry Belafonte Jr., a civil rights activist and singer who started the Gathering for Justice—as from her own family, and her personal history of loss and forgiveness. Through these struggles, she realized the importance of looking at injustice from many perspectives, including an environmental one.