She lived the “stereotypical cheerleader high school vibe.”

Senior Camila Patino was on the varsity cheerleading team, co-president of the National Beta Club and secretary of Bellaire’s Red Bird Production theater company.

But beneath her packed schedule and wide smile, something was missing: a connection to the Mexican culture that shaped her.

“We always speak Spanish at home, that was the number-one rule,” Gabriela González González, Patino’s mother said. “We kept traditions alive through cooking, music, celebrating holidays like Dia de los Muertos and visiting family in Mexico every summer and winter.”

But at school, Patino often kept these parts of her hidden, not out of shame, but out of habit. She had learned to compartmentalize, switching between the world of her Mexican heritage and the high school identity she thought she needed to embody.

“Speaking Spanish in public was something that was really hard for me growing up,” Patino said. “I was very divided between speaking Spanish only with my family and speaking English only with my friends.”

Camila’s parents moved from Mexico to the U.S. when she was a year old, settling in Houston so her father could pursue his MBA at Rice University. Her earliest memories were shaped by visits to the Rice campus and time spent with families from Latin America who, like her own, had moved to the U.S. Through these families, she was introduced to the dual language program at Mark Twain elementary school.

“For me, a big must was that my kids would speak Spanish, so dual language helped us stay in contact with families that were living the same experience as us.” González González said. “We also met these amazing American families who were also really interested in understanding our culture and living and speaking our language. We never felt any rejection from any community that we were in touch with.”

But as she grew older, Patino’s Spanish tongue felt increasingly out of place in the English-only instruction of Pin Oak Middle School and Bellaire High School. It took a different kind of language – acting – for Patino to embrace all of herself.

“I didn’t do theater until freshman year, and I kind of just stuck with it,” Patino said. “My friend Lindsey was like, ‘Hey, there’s auditions for High School Musical, you should do it. You have an extra elective, and you don’t really know much about Bellaire.’ I just knew I needed to get involved in a bunch of different things.”

Theater became an organization that Patino dedicated a lot of time to. She attended UIL competitions and found a “great community of people.” Ironically, playing the role of a character helped Patino discover more about herself.

“Being in different activities gave her a lot of confidence and different groups of people where she could learn from,” Senior and friend Lindsay Page said. “Her friends from cheer are different from her friends from theater, and I think that was very important for her growth through high school because she could see different perspectives and could experience herself in different environments.”

Being exposed to these new environments, Patino’s self-identity began to blossom.

She grew more in touch with her culture and saw yearly visits to Mexico as an opportunity rather than a chore.

“There was a part of me I wasn’t fully recognizing when I came into high school,” Patino said. “It was the part shaped by how I grew up and the culture my parents passed on through food, family and traditions. Spending summers and winters in Mexico started to mean more to me. By junior year, I built friendships with people from different cultures who were really in touch with their roots and that inspired me to reconnect with mine in a more intentional way, even while living in the U.S.”

When Patino had this realization, she began to embrace her culture more fully. She celebrated her quinceañera at her family’s ranch in Mexico, took on service projects and began reflecting more deeply on her identity. These experiences shaped the stories she shared in her college applications.

“I committed to the University of Southern California and I am majoring in Behavioral Economics and Psychology,” Patino said. “I chose econ because I knew I wanted to do something business-related, but I also wanted to explore why people make the decisions they do. Behavioral econ is about the why; why people from different cultures make certain decisions in certain places.”

For González González, this path didn’t come as a surprise. She had seen firsthand how the range of experiences Patino has been exposed to, especially in Mexico, left lasting impressions.

“She has visited a lot of parts of Mexico that are very low in resources,” González González said. “She has seen poverty in front of her and also wealth in front of her. That had a lot of influence in what she is going to study and what she is going to do through college.”

As Patino looks ahead to USC, she’s not limiting herself to the classroom. With a strong interest in entrepreneurship, she envisions launching a clothing company that gives back, donating one item for every product sold. Her goal is to begin this work in Mexico, where she already has connections from previous community service projects.

“I’m a strong believer of taking every opportunity that you have, because you never know what the outcome is going to be,” Patino said. “That mindset has definitely gotten me places. I mean, I’m at my dream school.”
Even as she turns toward business and policy, Patino isn’t letting go of her creative roots. USC’s prestigious film school offers her a chance to explore acting – something she’s eager to pursue as a passion project. It’s a way to carry the theater experiences she treasured at Bellaire with her into college life.

“I kind of want to get into film acting a little bit as a side hustle,” Patino said. “I saw that as a super cool opportunity.”

In every step, Patino is choosing to lead with curiosity rather than restriction. The more she leaned into her cultural identity, the more complete she felt – not one version of herself, but many layers coexisting at once.

“I used to feel like I had to pick one: either be fully American or fully Mexican,” Patino said. “But I’ve realized I don’t have to choose. I can be both.”