Jaime E. Lizárraga, senior adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: “This is probably more a thing of the past but … I’ve often heard the expectation that as a Latino staffer, you would only work or focus on Latino issues. All issues are, in my mind, Latino issues. Every policy issue that Congress acts on affects the Latino community in one form or another.”

Emily Benavides, deputy communications director to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio: “I didn’t come from a background where we were super politically active. … This was a totally new direction for my family, so I had to sort of scrape my own way and build my own network. It’s challenging but I was lucky in that I was able to find other young Hispanic conservative women and we banded together and supported together, created our own community here in D.C. and thus were able to promote one another whenever we heard about jobs becoming available.”

[Black Women Movers and Shakers on Capitol Hill]

Ortiz Wertheim: “It’s not just like people don’t look like me, it’s just the lens that you grow up on when you come from a place like Nambé [New Mexico] where I grew up, where it’s about family, it’s about … you are a community, you take care of each other. Coming here, you have to find … where are you going to be able to show that leadership and find the core group of folks in this new place who can help you?”

Rodriguez: “I think coming from a Hispanic background, especially a Hispanic conservative background, you’re taught to be very opinionated and outspoken at a very early age, and that’s something people aren’t always used to. Fortunately, it’s become one of my strengths.”