Betty Avila of Self-Help Graphics delivers a keynote speech to the 2017 Getty Foundation multicultural interns. (Elon Schoenholz / Getty Foundation)

By Carolina A. Miranda

In summer 1999, Edgar Garcia took an internship at the Los Angeles Conservancy that helped change the course of his life.

Born in Hollywood and raised in Lincoln Heights, Garcia is the son of Mexican immigrants who, when he was accepted at Yale University, hoped he might study something “practical.” Maybe medicine, engineering or law.

“I was forcing myself to go down that track and take the courses in areas I thought I had to,” he recalls. “But every time I took a history or architecture course, that was my passion.”

That passion ultimately led him to apply to the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Internship Program, which funds undergraduate internships for students from underrepresented groups at cultural organizations around Los Angeles County.