Hi! My name is Ariana Nieves, and I am a second-semester senior at Pitt on the brink of finishing my college career. I am studying Marketing and Digital Media and love making art, reading books, taking photos, traveling, or reading books and taking photos while traveling. I would consider myself what people call “right-brained” (although I learned in a recent Psychology course that this was, indeed, a myth) although I can be quite analytical and Type A at times. I recently completed an 8-month-long internship, though I’m still not sure what I want to do in my post-grad career. I have many goals (maybe too many at times), can be painfully organized, but still struggle with the temptation of procrastinating. I get pretty nervous when meeting new people, wanted to be an interior designer when I was younger, and travel to Canada sometimes multiple times a month. Most of all, I have a multitude of hopes and dreams, both personally and professionally, that I can’t wait to realize once I begin my life after college. 

Choosing to participate in this program was, without a doubt, a no-brainer for me. I come from a strong Puerto Rican heritage (3 of my grandparents were born on the island and migrated to the U.S. before my parents were born) but have not yet had the chance to visit. I would say my Spanish language skills are pretty solid, but I’ve always felt like I was waiting for that perfect opportunity to enhance them. I have wanted to study abroad for my entire time at Pitt, but unfortunately had personal struggles that led me to decide to stay close to home. I lost my grandmother in 2021, to whom I attribute all of my strength, wisdom, and pride in my Puerto Rican culture, who was born in Cataño (where we will be traveling and working this spring break). I have to say that this program being resurrected after losing her, and during my final semester here no less, felt like it was meant to be. I took this as a sign that I had an unforgettable opportunity to honor her, make my family and myself proud, and also exercise the knowledge I have worked so hard to gain throughout the last 4 years. My grandma was always so excited to hear about school when I came back home to Buffalo for breaks, which I did often because I always missed my family way too much. I hadn’t learned much about her life before moving to New York until recently and getting to see where she came from will be a truly unforgettable experience. 

I have to note that upon looking through our syllabus at the start of the semester, I saw that our group’s final presentation falls on her birthday, April 18th. To say I had chills is an understatement. 

Making a difference in what I do has always been something of value to me. At the start of my journey in business school, I always found myself grappling with some of the unethical norms in the corporate world, wondering if I had made the right choice for my future career. I now understand that there are a multitude of avenues to take within marketing that can lead to an ethical, generous, humanity-centered career. This opportunity to work with an organization that is truly dedicated to helping their community (one that I already feel so close to) means the world to me. I am often quite shy and reserved, especially in an academic setting, but something about this project has ignited a fire in me. I feel a strong passion not only to make a difference in the communities of Cataño and Guaynabo but to also do right by my heritage. My driving force in this project is knowing that our work can lead to increased funds for our client, Caras, which would support children in the San Juan area. The work that they do to provide hands-on learning experiences and contact with nature to the children is incredibly special. I find that throughout our work on this project, the only thing I tend to care about is how this will directly impact the people of Puerto Rico and what will be best for them. Ensuring that this is the center of our project and every recommendation we make is incredibly important to me.  

Caras con Causa (which directly translates to “faces with cause”) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting local, rural areas in Puerto Rico. They integrate ecology, education, and community development in a seamless package that not only benefits the island but the planet as a whole. They work in conserving the precious wetlands in the area, designing innovative educational programs for kids, and just generally supporting the people of the island. After some devastation from Hurricane Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic, funding has become an issue for their organization. To garner funding in the future, Caras is hoping to develop a program with their new scientific laboratory (LabCom), in which students from American universities pay to use the lab to conduct valuable research in the wetlands. If this project is deemed successful, the LabCom program has the potential to raise money that can be used to support other initiatives, like “Esudia y Crece” (Study and Learn) or reforestation efforts. 

Though I have worked on school projects with clients before and had experience with client work in my internship, this feels completely unlike all of those experiences. In this project, we are lucky to have the opportunity to truly make a difference in even just one person’s life. I think about our project often and am so excited to see where the rest of the semester takes us. And while I know that this experience will have a major impact on my education, I can’t deny the fact that I’m excited about the personal growth I will experience as well. I can’t think of a better way for me to prepare myself to enter post-grad life and heal and grow all at the same time. There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how grateful I’m feeling for all of this.