During my junior year at Pitt, I served as a Student Ambassador for the Global Studies Center. This was one of my valuable experiences, because I learned how to acquire and navigate professional skills in an academic institution while also enhancing my cultural competency skills by interacting with various departments within the University Center for International Studies. One of my most memorable experiences as a student ambassador was designing and orchestrating a sweat shop simulation for the University community to participate in and understand the burdens of fast fashion. In preparation for this event, I was encouraged to venture outside of my comfort zone by cutting and sewing model shirts together, which was something that I had never done before.

During the entirety of my senior year, I worked as a research assistant alongside Dr. Scott Morgenstern in the Department of Political Science with the goal of providing research for a comprehensive book regarding historical relations between the United States and Latin America. This research position allowed me to directly apply the knowledge and skills that I had learned in my Latin American Politics and US-Latin American Relations courses, because I had already been introduced to patterns in these relations. During my research, I analyzed important resources including congressional records from the Spanish American War, events leading up to the Cuban Revolution, and the negative consequences in Latin America as a result of US imperialism.