Rochelle Calderon: I Am Barnes & Thornburg

I AM...

• Someone who was born and raised in the Visayas islands of the Philippines, and a sun worshipper and a mermaid at heart
• The (favorite) granddaughter of a wartime nurse who raised eight children and put my grandpa through law school
• A Barnes & Noble squatter. I haunt it like a literary ghost, browsing for hours and leaving with an armful of books; my fave is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
• An epicure – from savoring oysters in France or tapas in Spain to enjoying street food in Thailand, count me in
• A pet parent to a 21-pound ragamuffin cat, Rabbit, who shared an unlikely friendship with a chinchilla
• A Whovian, K-drama consumer, true crime junkie, and cartoon aficionado when I channel surf
• A bargain hunter
• Risk averse…except when I completed a half-marathon on a bet despite never having been a runner before
• Someone who chased the aurora borealis in Iceland for almost a week
• Still very close friends with my grade school and high school classmates. Every year, we jet off to new countries, turning our friendship into a global adventure.

This profile appeared in the May 2024 edition of I Am Barnes & Thornburg.

View the full publication.