Heritage & Heart
Kiko Macias (’25 J.D.) is a lot of things — ambitious, compassionate, generous, hopeful. But, above all, he is resilient.
Born in Albuquerque, Macias spent much of his childhood reflecting on his ancestral history. His family were migrant farmworkers from Mexico and their lives centered around the changing seasons and crops — moving to California, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas. Life seemed limited to the confines of the camps they stayed in. But he remembers the stories of his family’s involvement in the Chicano Movement and the many lawyers and activists who fought for basic civil rights for their fellow immigrants and Latino colleagues. These stories set the tone for his destiny.
At 16, after a series of heartbreaking conflicts at home, Macias was emancipated from his family. He moved to California to play professional soccer for the San Jose Earthquakes Academy. Upon graduating high school, he decided to give up his dreams of professional soccer to get a college degree.
“I decided I’d rather try to own the team than play for it,” he says, both joking and not. Macias has a way of making grand statements like this feel charming and natural.
While in college in San Antonio, Texas, Macias worked a summer internship with a nonprofit called RAICES, an organization that helps asylum seekers detained at the border. This experience, combined with those from his childhood, led Kiko to contemplate ways to streamline the immigration process. As part of a competition for entrepreneurs, he launched Monarch Migration, an app designed to help individuals navigate the incredibly complex immigration bureaucracy. It advises users on the best country and legal path to pursue, guides them through the application process, and even supports their integration through education, employment, and social services.
Macias chose Íø±¬ÃÅ for law school, in part because Spokane is so friendly to tech start-ups like his.
“The public library provides entrepreneurs access to these amazing databases,” he says. “I can get the same tech for half the price.”
This company would be ambitious enough for most people finishing law school, but its success is just one of Macias’s many goals. He has his sights set on politics — state, national, or both. But first, he’d like to become a diplomat, maybe even an ambassador. The first step in realizing this dream is an LL.M. in international tax, which he plans to pursue next year in Chicago at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. After his undergraduate degree, Macias worked for the Consulate of Belgium, an experience that opened his eyes to the world of international trade and diplomacy. In his position, he routinely sat in on meetings with representatives from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Namibia, Mexico, and more.
“I loved seeing the facilitation of diplomacy,” he says. “All of it. The negotiation, the drafts of the contracts, and just all the different cultures. They’re all so beautiful.”
For Macias, the answer to so many of the world’s problems is right out in the open. It’s love and mutual respect.
“I have seen and experienced so much hate in this world,” he says with tears in his eyes. “In the end, we are all the same. We are one family.”