Six years ago, Diana Ramos was standing behind the campus center listening to a speaker discuss the topic of homelessness. The talk was part of Tent City, a weeklong event where BSU students lived outside and abjured the comforts of home.
Ms. Ramos, who graduated in 2012, once narrowly escaped being homeless; her aunt opened her home in Worcester to Ms. Ramos and her mother when all the local domestic violence shelters were full. She’d come a long way from that situation, and the month before graduating from BSU, Ms. Ramos was selected as one of the commonwealth’s 29 Who Shine: a group of students from state institutions boasting a record of academic achievement, student leadership and community service.
Recently, Ms. Ramos, now 27, returned to her alma mater. This time, she wasn’t listening to a speaker, she was the speaker. Addressing classes over the course of two days last month, she retraced her steps from college graduate to employee of the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., where she is a program analyst for the Women, Infants and Children program.
She spends her days making sure states comply with federal regulations as they pertain to WIC, and helping them customize the program as needed.
The fact that WIC is a program that helps low-income people struggling to feed themselves and their children is what attracted Ms. Ramos to the job.
“I’ve always had a strong sense of civic duty,” she said. “I tend to think very systematically. I like to look at the big picture, but without losing sight with what’s going on on the ground.”
The job has led her to ask some larger questions, such as: What does poverty mean? What does it mean for our future? This is not new territory for Ms. Ramos. During her time at Bridgewater, she was a member of the Social Justice League and Diversity Council; was one of the founding members and president of Students for Sustainability; and publicity chair for AWARE, a student-run organization for GLBT students and allies. These are just for starters. And that involvement continued after she graduated. She also interned at former Sen. John Kerry’s office, at the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement in Washington D.C., and at Centro de Amigos para la Paz (Friends Peace Center) in Costa Rica.
Follow her example, was the advice Ms. Ramos shared with the students during her recent visit to campus.
“I told them to take advantage of all the opportunities they can,” she said.
She continued to be active after graduating from BSU, serving twice with AmeriCorps Vista, once near her hometown in Central Massachusetts, the second time in the nation’s capital, where she worked for a nonprofit called DC Hunger Solutions.
“I was working with government officials to see how our nonprofit can help with their nutrition assistance programs,” she said. “This sparked my interest in the role the government plays with regard to food security and nutrition,”
One thing Ms. Ramos talked to students about during her recent visit was the importance of networking. While at an event in Washington, she met the son of a woman who happened to be the deputy administrator at the Department of Agriculture. She asked the woman for an informational interview to learn more about the agency, and it turned out to be much more. Months later, her new connection paid off.
She was hired in September of 2014.
“People always say this is how you get a job, but it’s true, this is how it happens.”
Those classrooms full of students that had the benefit of hearing from Ms. Ramos last month got an object lesson in how to find their place in the world. Get involved, take chances, do good work, and network whenever you can.
“It made the difference for me,” Ms. Ramos said. (Story and photo by John Winters, G ’11, University News & Media)