Laura López-Sanders of Stanford University joined Zócalo to discuss race and immigration, particularly immigrant integration and how the experience varies with gender. Read more about her non-academic side below.

Q. What music have you listened to today?

A. None today, but last night before I went to bed I listened to some classical music, that’s pretty much what I do before I go to bed.

Q. What is your favorite word?

A. Change.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A. A war correspondent.

Q. What is your favorite cocktail?

A. Strawberry daiquiri.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?

A. Africa. I’ve never been.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?

A. I always liked writing. And it is connected with my current profession, but I would like to write.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?

A. Running by the streams of water after a rainy day in my hometown in Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico. All the kids in the neighborhood would get out of their homes and look for dripping from the clay roofs, and catch every drop after the rain.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?

A. My family.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?

A. That I will run a marathon.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?

A. My dad. He passed away.

*Photo by Andy Levin.