Aurea Martinez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and immigrated with her mother to the United States in 1992. She attended the University of California Santa Barbara and earned her Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Latin American studies. She started organizing in college to provide resources for undocumented students, to stop tuition increases and for the passage of the DREAM Act. In 2014, she was part of the inaugural Code for Progress Fellowship, where she learned coding and human centered design. Currently resides in Washington DC where she loves to eat and run, preferably not in that order.