Mike Young is an expert on culture. He has studied it and lived it for his entire life.
As a teenager from rural El Salvador, Young’s mother waited at the Mexico-U.S. border for two weeks before immigrating to California with a sixth-grade education. She learned English and eventually married – teaching her children her native Spanish and creating a family that identified with multiple cultures.
When Young was an undergraduate student at California State University, he embarked on the first of four cultural immersion experiences – conducting an ethnoecology field study in Mexico. After completing bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and human resource management, he moved across the country to enroll in UofSC’s M.A. in Cultural Anthropology program.
“My understanding of identity was always shaped by my upbringing and compounded by the issues I saw in the world,” Young says. “Anthropology helped me comprehend and effect change.”