He is the founder and CEO of Define American, a non-profit media and culture organization that seeks to elevate the conversation around immigration and citizenship in America; and the founder, CEO, editor, and publisher of #EmergingUS a digital platform on race, immigration, and identity in America.
#EmergingUS is the first-ever media property owned by an undocumented immigrant. In June 2011, the New York Times Magazine published an essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME magazine with fellow undocumented immigrants. He then produced and directed Documented, a documentary film on his undocumented experience. It premiered at the AFI Docs film festival in Washington, D.C. in 2013, was released theatrically and broadcast on CNN in 2014, and received a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Documentary. In July 2015, MTV aired White People, a television special he produced and directed on what it means to be young and white in contemporary America. He has written for the Philadelphia Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, and was a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post. Prior to that, he covered tech and video game culture, HIV/AIDS in the nation’s capital, and the 2008 presidential campaign for the Washington Post, and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the Virginia Tech massacre.