Henry Leonel Sales Hernandez is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies in the Language, Literacy, and Culture cluster. He is an Indigenous Maya Mam scholar from San Juan Atitán, Guatemala, whose research examines Indigenous language revitalization, bilingualism and multilingualism, translanguaging, and the educational experiences of Maya Mam immigrant youth and families in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His scholarship draws on participatory ethnographic and community-based methodologies to investigate how Mam language and culture are sustained across intergenerational, educational, and diasporic contexts. He is particularly interested in the role of schools, families, community organizations, and digital spaces in supporting language transmission and cultural continuity. His work also explores Indigenous pedagogies, Autoridad Indigenous (Indigenous Authority), Indigenous epistemologies, community literacy practices, and the ways Maya Mam youth serve as cultural brokers and language stewards.

In addition to his doctoral research, Sales Hernandez has contributed to Maya Mam language and cultural revitalization efforts in Oakland through community programming, language workshops, and educational initiatives designed to support youth and families. He has also served as a Graduate Student Instructor at UC Berkeley. His broader academic goal is to advance research, teaching, and public scholarship that center Indigenous knowledge, strengthen community-university relationships, and support the flourishing of Maya Mam language and culture across generations.