Carnegie Mellon University
October 01, 2021

Putting the Pieces Together

CMU alumna crosses borders and language barriers to bring poetry to the masses

By Kristy Locklin

For Carnegie Mellon University alumna Paloma Sierra, piecing together stories has been a lifelong obsession.

“I was first introduced to poetry in school when I was 8 years old,” she says. “It’s like a puzzle; you have to find certain words that fit.” 

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she is using her wordsmithing skills and experience to represent her homeland through plays, screenplays, musicals and operas. Paloma earned a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts in creative writing and drama in 2019 and a master’s degree in dramatic writing in 2021 from the College of Fine Arts by blazing her own trail at Carnegie Mellon. 

Today, she is penning a segment of Hero Theatre and Hero Multimedia’s “Nuestro Planeta,” a decade-long, multimedia new works initiative that focuses on educating Latinx film and theater audiences about environmental justice within the Americas.

Over the next two years, she’s tasked with taking subjects such as global warming and sustainability and molding them into a form of entertainment that educates. 

Read more about Paloma’s passion