Monique Rials was born and raised in Chicago, IL but has made Memphis her forever home. She works for Memphis Public Libraries and has a furniture restoration and painting business, Salvage Life 81. She prides herself on seeing beauty in everything and everyone. Rials is a graduate of the first High Ground News Community Correspondents program, a training course to train Memphians from under-served communities as neighborhood reporters able to create expert narratives from within.