My parents were immigrants, and I’m the first in my family to graduate college — but I won’t be the last
A daughter of Peruvian emigres and a first-generation student who graduated Penn last week offers a simple message to other Latin members of the Class of 2025: Never give up.
Dancing saved me.
In salsa, I found joy, healing, and freedom. In the loneliest days when I first came to the University of Pennsylvania — the oldest daughter of two immigrant parents and the first to attend college — it was in dance where I rediscovered myself, where I felt free, where I knew — I was meant to be here.
Like so many other students of Latin American descent, my graduation is the culmination of a long journey. My parents left everything behind in Perú — their home, sus familias, their language, their roots — all for the hope of something better. Not just for themselves, but for the generations to come.
And that sacrifice … I will never forget. In my darkest moments, when I felt like giving up, when I was too tired to keep going, I thought of them.
Of their strength. Of their courage. Of their love.
And it reminded me: that strength also lives in me.
I am a first-generation, low-income college student. La primera de mi familia en graduarse de la universidad. But I know I won’t be the last. Because behind me a whole generation of dreamers, fighters, and leaders is coming.
I come from Paterson, N.J. — a city with many difficulties, but also with a lot of life, a lot of culture, and a lot of dignity. The kind of place people overlook. But it built me.
To think that someone like me could make it from there to here — to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy league institution — still feels surreal.
The Class of 2025 made it here against all odds.
We graduated from high school during a pandemic — a time filled with fear, uncertainty, and pain. The world was dark. But we kept going. And now, we’re graduating into another kind of darkness.
A world that questions our worth. With policies that make us feel like we don’t belong.
A country where immigrant communities are under attack.
But let me tell you something:
We are still here. We are graduating. And that is resilience.
This diploma is more than a piece of paper.
It’s tangible evidence of every sleepless night.
Of every hidden tear.
Of every sacrifice made for our families.
Of every time we felt we couldn’t, but did it anyway.
At Penn, I’ve had the privilege to wear many hats and take part in many student organizations post-pandemic.
But let me be real with you.
There were moments I wanted to quit. Moments where I questioned my worth, my character, my light.
But even then … I kept going. Because I know who I am. I poured love, grace, and dedication into everything I touched. Because my parents didn’t raise me to be small. Because they didn’t raise me to quit. They raised me to believe in myself. In my character. In my dignity. In my resilient Latin nature. And despite the hatred, I kept going.
And to those who tried to turn off my light … here I am. Shining brighter than ever.
Because the struggle, el amor, and the faith that brought me here — they don’t fade. They just grow.
But I could not have done this without all of the people who stayed and loved me when I couldn’t love myself. To those who listened when I couldn’t speak. To those who reminded me I was never truly alone.
Class of 2025 — we did this. We are the first class to fully experience college life post-pandemic. We brought life back to this campus. We filled the gap that was left to make sure our Latino community was still present. We brought back organizations, started new ones, and created community in places that weren’t made for us. We carried the legacies left behind and built our own.
And no matter what the world tries to tell us — we know our worth. So as we step into this next chapter, I want to leave you with this:
Be bold. Be you. Confía en ti. This world needs people like us — who love hard, who work harder, who know struggle, but never give up.
Use this education — this privilege — to make change. To open doors for others. To build the world our parents dreamed of when they crossed borders and oceans.
To our parents: This achievement is as much yours as it is ours. Thank you for sacrificing, for enduring, for never giving up.
Thank you for teaching us to dream.
Thank you for loving us beyond belief.
They tried to make us feel like we didn’t belong. But here we are. Graduating. Fighting. Living.
And dancing, too.
Sandra María Navarro Davalos graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania last week with a bachelor of arts in communication concentrating in advocacy & activism, with minors in fine arts and Latinx & Latin American Studies. A native of Paterson, N.J., she is enrolled in the master’s program at Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice. This essay is adapted from her remarks at Penn’s Latinx graduation ceremony.
Performer, biomedical engineer, and soon-to-be graduate
This story was originally published on May 13th 2025 in Penn Today.
Writer: Louisa Shepard
Photographer: Eric Sucar; Scott Spitzer
Graduating fourth-year Jordyn Harris is pursuing a career in engineering and medicine while also dedicating herself to the performing arts.
Mixing it up is what graduating fourth-year Jordyn Harris likes best.
At Penn she has been an applied science in biomedical sciences major while also pursuing a major in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, and she has had a work-study job in performing arts and another job as a researcher at a hospital. Harris has also been on stage as a dancer and behind the scenes running tech for student shows while also volunteering as an adviser and mentor for engineering students and a member of a performing arts senior society, as well as a sorority for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
“I’m a STEM girl who does performing arts; I like the mix,” Harris says. “I’m always doing something. But I love doing all of the things that I do.”
From Baltimore, Harris will graduate this month with a bachelor’s degree of applied science in biomedical sciences from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with a second major in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies from the College of Arts and Sciences.
“I’m doing a little bit of everything, and that’s what I think I’ll do with my career generally,” she says. “I want to dive into STEM and medicine but also performing arts as an outlet for my creative side, being in both, and having them interweave with volunteering.”
Harris helped other students as a volunteer orientation peer advisor and an advisor through the Advanced Women of Women in Engineering Preorientation program.
“The thing that is always surprising about Jordyn is how dedicated she is in terms of what she commits to. There’s a sense of responsibility that she has with every role that she’s taken on,” says Sonya Gwak, who until recently was director of student life and undergraduate education, but now is director of global academic programs at Penn Engineering.
“Jordyn’s information has always been reliable because she’ll do her homework and make sure that what she says is accurate. People can depend on her,” Gwak says, including making sure every first-year student is registered for classes. “Because it’s completely voluntary and it because it is a huge undertaking, having somebody like Jordyn in that role is invaluable.”
Harris encouraged engineering students to do performing arts and clubs and other creative pursuits even if that wasn’t what they planned for their careers. “Finding what makes you you, and doing those things in the midst of your career, in the midst of your academics, is key,” she says.
Performing Arts
Since her first year at Penn, Harris has been a work-study student at the Platt Student Performing Arts House helping to manage programming, as well as scheduling rehearsals and performances for student groups. Her interest in performing arts began with ballet when she was about 4 years old. She continued through high school where she played the violin and piano and also dove into theater arts, on stage and behind the scenes.
“If you don’t directly ask her or see her doing good things on campus, you won’t know because she is very humble,” says Laurie McCall, director of the Platt House, noting the many leadership roles Harris has taken on, including mentoring new students as they navigate their performing arts experience.
Harris won the Platt House Impact Award that goes “to a student who goes above and beyond the scope of their campus responsibilities” to represent student performing arts “through continual service, model leadership, and general goodwill,” McCall says. “She is a joy to have in our circle.”
Since Harris’s second year at Penn she has been behind the scenes for many student performing arts productions, including iNtuitions Experimental Theater and several Theater Arts Council shows.
“I’ve done pretty much all sides of tech: lights, sound, stage managing both theater and dance,” she says. “I’m also producing, making sure everything is managed the way it should be, things are getting done, all the deadlines are met.”
Her third year she joined Onda Latina as a dancer and usually performs salsa but also mambo fusion, hip-hop, and bachata, working with student choreographers.
STEM
While involved in high school theater, she also was taking all the advanced placement science classes. “Growing up I always wanted to be an engineer,” inspired by her father, she says. “I think that sparked me; I’ve always been good at math, so engineering was my way to go.”
She decided she also wanted to study medicine. Harris chose Penn, she says, because of the bioengineering program and the opportunities to volunteer at hospitals.
Harris completed pre-med requisites, including biology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, chemistry, and physics. She also chose bioengineering design courses, learning how to design medical devices. In one class she worked with doctors at the Perelman School of Medicine “learning about the different devices that they’ve created and learning how to build devices around patients.”
She completed most of her bioengineering classes in her first two years and then took gender studies courses in her third and fourth years. “I really like the breadth of gender studies at Penn because every class is different. I learn something new with all of them,” she says.
“I want to be able to apply those into engineering, into medicine: how different cultures, different races, have been influenced throughout history,” she says. “Especially in the medical field, coming at it from both an engineering STEM and a gender studies perspective.”
For nearly a year Harris has been a paid undergraduate student researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) working with Jalaj Maheshwari in the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. The prior two years she was an undergraduate student researcher with Michelle Johnson in the Rehabilitation Robotics Lab at the medical school.
Harris’s thesis for her applied science degree incorporates the work she has been doing at CHOP, which involves running computerized car crash test simulations on child car seats, testing parameters and dimensions of the seats to minimize child injuries in crashes. A subproject of hers is developing a program that manufacturers can use in building the car seats, and to make recommendations to parents to maximize safety.
Penn Alumni recently awarded Harris the 2025 Association of Latino Alumni Student Leadership Award from the James Brister Society.
Looking Ahead
This summer, Harris will be continuing her research at CHOP, with goals of publishing a paper and presenting at conferences. She then is planning to take two gap years, to explore abroad, work, volunteer in hospitals and in theater, and apply to medical schools. She is leaning towards a career in orthopedics. “I’m interested in robotics and prosthetics,” she says.
Gwak says Harris will be greatly missed when she graduates since she has been “a constant part of the community” with a “quiet leadership” that “exemplifies building relationships.” At Penn for 32 years, Gwak says Harris is “one of those people that you remember forever. Once you interact with Jordyn, it’s hard to forget her.”
Graduation will be “a bittersweet moment” and no longer being in school is going to be an adjustment, Harris says. “But I’m excited for what the future holds,” she says, adding that she will return to campus to see the student shows. “I’m going to be that alum who comes back.”
Brewing Business: A Wharton Undergrad’s Experience Managing Penn’s Student-Run Café
In the back of Williams Hall’s ground floor, behind staircases that lead to deep hallways of classrooms, adjacent to a silent lounge where students write essays in foreign languages for said classes, a sign announces the Drink of the Week. The drink changes and is often relevant to Philadelphia, like the “Fly Eagles Chai!” during Super Bowl week. In the seating areas by the counter, students gossip, meet with professors, and wait for their shifts to begin. The baristas are deft, bouncing between taking orders and serving customers.
At around 4 p.m., Olivia Turman (W’26) springs into action, training new baristas and keeping track of inventory to ensure the café is stocked for the next day. Williams Café, better known as Wilcaf, is part of Penn Student Agencies, a set of student-run organizations that provide services to students from photography to laundry to water delivery. Every role, from the CEO of Penn Student Agencies (PSA) to the baristas, are students who balance their shifts and duties with their courses.
Olivia began as a barista at Wilcaf, making drinks and food items. She then transitioned into supervising the catering program, ensuring that events around campus were supplied with coffee and bagels. As operations manager this year, Olivia is responsible for the café’s backend operations.
“Day to day, I do our inventory and stocking,” Olivia explained. “Every Wednesday, I come in, put away our deliveries, and then count to see what we have and calculate our rates of utilization.”
Olivia is from a small town in West Virginia called Barboursville, a tight-knit community.
“It’s the kind of place where you still help your neighbors,” she said. “When I was looking at colleges, I was looking for places where I felt like I could find a similar sense of community.”
Beyond that, because so much of Barboursville is small businesses, she found specific power in the ways that they can play a significant role in bringing people together in a community. For her, Wilcaf serves to honor her upbringing and helps create and strengthen the communities that she applied to Penn for.
“Yes, we’re just a café on campus,” she admitted. “But for a lot of people, we’re their study spot or we’re the smiling face in the morning when they need their cup of coffee or their bagel.”
The junior is concentrating in management with a specialization in organizational effectiveness, so a significant amount of her work is not only relevant but also an application of her educational focus on leadership and management. One of the courses she’s currently taking, Management 2380: Organizational Behavior, has been directly valuable for leading as a cafe manager.
“Learning a lot about the best way to do a performance review is super helpful,” the West Virginia native said.
While performance reviews may seem like something most Wharton students only worry about after graduating, student workers at PSA do yearly performance evaluations.
“I’ve been able to go back and directly apply it when we’re writing the policies for these performance reviews.”
Beyond that, she uses skills from her finance and accounting Business Fundamentals courses when looking at the budget and accounting books. The case-study style of her coursework, ranging from Management 3010: Teamwork and Interpersonal Influence to Marketing 2110: Consumer Behavior, has allowed her to apply lessons from real-world challenges companies have faced to Wilcaf and PSA’s operations.
We’re learning about different pricing and marketing strategies and where certain companies went wrong, so we’re not making the same mistakes,” she said about her consumer behavior course. “It’s very helpful to see how companies came out of certain problems so that we can gauge accordingly.”
Another way that she’s learned about the applicability of her pre-professional and academic pursuits is through the alumni network—during Penn’s Homecoming weekend last year, PSA alumni came back for a reunion that was, of course, catered by Wilcaf. As she talked to the people who had gone through Penn Student Agencies, she understood how the skills she’s gained directly apply to the professional world.
Next year, she’ll be moving on to a role as the COO of Penn Student Agencies. Having mastered Wilcaf’s operations, she looks forward to understanding the different agencies better and strengthening the community between them.
As for her continued goals as a barista? She’s in the process of learning latte foam art. A leaf is the easiest for her, but she says a heart is the coolest.
Penn student, finalist for Oticon Focus on People Awards, advocates for those with hearing loss
Yaduraj Choudhary (C’27 W’27) is confronting his hearing loss through advocacy work and his student-led non-profit organization, Three Tiny Bones. The organization is dedicated to creating a more inclusive society by educating communities about healthy hearing and destigmatizing hearing loss. Choudhary was recently featured on Fox29, promoting his efforts and recognition as a finalist for the Oticon Focus on People Awards. These awards honor individuals with hearing loss who actively contribute to spreading awareness, education, and support within their communities.