Faculty Profile: Gabriela Gerstenfeld

Could you tell us about the hotel you built in Uruguay?
I’ve built two hotels. I used to build buildings, like apartment buildings mostly but also other projects. And then came the idea of a hotel, and I say ‘Yeah, why not’. So we go to a hotel, and find land, and a group of people that wanted to invest, and it’s a small hotel, but it’s a four-star hotel with ten floors plus a lobby. It has done well, it’s in a nice location, it’s not downtown but it’s very close to the river and the ocean. This was my own company, I was the architect, the designer, and the builder. I still work as an architect in the summer. One project [since I moved to the U.S.] that I did in Uruguay is a place for parties, called La Hacienda, that was the last big project I did. A lot of summers here I buy a house and I flip it. I always need to be doing something. My mother is a stay-at-home mom, but I can’t do that.

When did you move to America from Uruguay?
I moved here eighteen years ago. That morning I went to my hotel where the construction was finished but the furniture was arriving. Until noon I was still receiving furniture, because a hotel is diferent from when you build a building -- you need to furnish it. I was moving [furniture] but I hadn’t packed. I brought one suitcase, and whatever fit inside, that’s what I brought.

Why did you decide to teach Spanish?

So I worked in New York, in an office with long hours, and I worked until the very last week of my pregnancy. After that, it was hard to go back to an office with long hours when I had a baby. I didn’t know what to do. I took a break of maternity leave. Meanwhile, I couldn’t do being without work or doing something. I offered the city to teach some courses during the afernoons just to do something. I started with art courses, because it was what I knew the most. In addition to that, before I became an architect, I used to be a math teacher, because I liked it. Then I got my degree and I didn’t go back to that kind of teaching. We [my husband and I] were about to move from New York to Connecticut, and my husband told me ‘Why don’t you teach Spanish?’ I sent some resumes, and the day afer, Hopkins called me because they needed a substitute for a couple of weeks, and I commuted in from New York [each day], and I loved it. Then I went to Spanish Literature, and I loved it the most.

What do you like better: being an architect or teaching?

I miss being an architect and working through the whole project. I got a little tired and bored when I would work on a project and only do one thing, so every day becomes the same. I used to do the whole thing, from materials to workers -- a little bit of everything, not just sitting behind a computer. When I started as an architect, we would do all of the drawings by hand. When we started using computers, the work turned into many hours behind a computer. I miss the back and forth of being in the construction site, physically with the material.

What’s one thing that people should know about you?
I received a notifcation for deportation in the US one time and I was shocked. It said that I have three months to leave the country, and it was obviously a mistake because I was a legal resident. So whenever I see children being separated from parents, I remember myself. All of a sudden, my life was fipped upside-down. I didn’t know how to explain that it was a mistake, but the government is huge and I didn’t know who to go to and explain that it was a mistake. Finally someone gave me the idea to call the local senator and that person called immigration in New York. That was a very scary moment: I had a son born in New York, a husband from Israel. The other thing that people should know is that my father, my step-father, my mother, my husband, my son, and I were all born in different countries. My family travels together and the passports are from everywhere: diferent colors and languages. And they look at us and say: “Is this a family?”