Portia Nartey, MSW ’22, MSP ’22

Portia Nartey is the first in her family to complete high school, the first to complete college, and the first to attain a graduate degree. She was recently accepted in three competitive PhD programs and has a long-term professional goal to work for the United Nations. Growing up in Ghana, Portia saw how cultural barriers […]

Aaron Samuels, BSBA ’11

Aaron Samuels defies labels. He is a spoken word artist and a published poet, author of the 2013 collection Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps. He is a corporate strategist who worked at Bain & Co. and an entrepreneur who co-founded and served as chief operating officer of Blavity, the largest global Black media company for millennials […]

Jennifer Dionne, BS ’03, BS ’03

At the age of eight, Jennifer Dionne planned to pursue a career in the paranormal. An avid fan of the X-files, she aspired to be an investigator—an Agent Scully—uncovering clues and unpacking supernatural mysteries. Raised as an only child in Rhode Island, Jen had great freedom to indulge her inquisitive inclinations. Her mother, a nurse, […]

Sheilly Moreno, AB ’21, MA ’22

When she first arrived on campus, Sheilly Moreno thought she wanted to pursue premed, but WashU helped her explore multiple academic interests that took her all over the world. During her four years as an undergraduate, Sheilly studied in four countries: China, Japan, South Korea, and Spain. In the spring of 2021, she earned bachelor’s […]