Julio Quintana

Julio Quintana was born in Los Angeles, the oldest of five brothers. His parents both left Cuba after nearly a decade under Castro's revolution, settling in California, where his father became the first in his family to earn a college degree.

Shortly after his birth, Quintana's family moved to Kenai, AK, and over the next decade, they moved five more times, experiencing life in various towns throughout California, Louisiana, and Texas, which may have contributed to Quintana's fascination with cultural differences and commonalities.

In 2000, Quintana enrolled in the Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Texas at Austin, but later switched to Religious Studies, where he explored the diverse palette of stories and mythologies that shaped human history. Intrigued by the role that stories play in forming human identities, he expanded his studies to include a second degree in Radio-Television-Film.