Super-busy, independent, and driven, actress and mother, Dasha Polanco stars as the “Jailbird Sweetheart”, Dayanara “Daya” Diaz, in the award-winning Netflix original series, Orange is the New Black.

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn by way of Miami, Polanco was attending classes for nursing at LIU, and working as a Central Sterile Manager at a hospital in New York City when she landed the part on OITNB. Orange is the New Black has been commended for its depictions of racial issues, with one critic saying that: “it is a text with a degree of cultural relevance in our current pop culture moment that undoubtedly connects with the issue of race.”

In March 2014, Rocero shared her journey into womanhood and came out as transgender at TED Conference. She also launched Gender Proud, an advocacy and awareness campaign advocating for a global Gender Recognition Policy that will allow transgender and gender variant people to change their name and gender marker on legal documents without being forced to go through surgeries, force sterilization and other de-humanizing barriers. Right now, only a handful of countries allow you to do that.