Maria Isabel Vaz was born and raised in Cabo Verde in the Santiago Island, in the municipality of Santa Catarina. She migrated to Portugal with all her family in 1972 during the colonial occupation in Cape Verde and the PAIGC liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau. In Portugal she worked as a domestic worker, where she married and became a mother of five. A humble and caring woman with strong values and beliefs, she made sure to transmit her knowledges, life experience, and social justice principles to her daughters. Gardening and farming are her passions, an inheritance brought from her life in the countryside in Cabo Verde. Maria Isabel Vaz is now retired and lives in Amadora, Portugal.