Category: 2022-2023 Honorees

Born and raised in Cartagena, Colombia, Nicolas Castillo dreamed of attending college in the United States. That dream was realized when he was accepted into the University of South Florida. But that was just the beginning, as the social and economic challenges of living and studying abroad lay ahead. 

Castillo is pursuing a major in finance because he has always been fascinated by how money and markets work and how it impacts our daily lives in small and big ways.  

His passion for finance led him to join the American Red Cross Club at USF. As the junior finance chair, he manages budgets and handles purchase requests. 

He is also an active member of the Investment Club at USF. As the equity research associate, he performs comprehensive financial analysis of various companies and coordinates with a team to create monthly reports that analyze market conditions. 

While speaking English was a barrier, Castillo said being involved in campus activities and working as a Knack Tutor helped him improve his language skills. Most recently, he was a financial analyst intern at the Banco de Bogota where he analyzed and prepared financial models. 

Castillo is on track to graduate in 2024 with three bachelor’s degrees — one in finance from USF and two degrees (business administration and accounting) from the Universidad del Norte.  

Wherever his academic journey takes him, he plans to give back to the community that helped him overcome his obstacles as a student from Colombia.

Tess Zambella is a leader. She is part of USF Student Government, served as the Sarasota-Manatee campus council’s Community Engagement Committee representative, and serves as the deputy financial officer for Sarasota-Manatee’s SG.  She currently chairs the committee that approves SG budget allocation requests. She works with department heads and student leaders on that campus to review and vote on requests. On top of this, she works at a local accounting firm preparing taxes part-time. 

Her SG experiences provided an opportunity for Zambella to serve as executive producer for TEDxUSFSM, which is a grassroots initiative created in the spirit of TED’s overall mission to discover “ideas worth spreading.” Zambella says leading TEDxUSFSM taught her how to plan and implement events more creatively than she can in budgetary roles.

When Hurricane Ian made landfall just an hour south of that campus in Ft. Myers, Zambella helped organize an emergency school cleanup to help area schools open sooner. She took part in USF’s Alternative Spring Break program, which sent a group of students to Ohio to help the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition. She has attended leadership retreats, such as the Emerging Leaders Retreat, Advanced Leaders Retreat and Boss Lady Retreat, taking lessons related to communication, diversity, and self-advocacy from each.

It is clear that she balances her community engagement work with her academics, evidenced by her 3.91-grade point average. Zambella is pursuing two degrees, one in accounting and one in business analytics and information systems. She is also working on a minor in economics. 

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Valeriia Korysttseva says her life was torn apart when her home country of Ukraine was invaded and bombings were reported near her hometown, located just 50 miles from the Russian border. She describes the stress of trying to focus on her finance studies in Tampa while seeing footage of dead bodies on the streets where she played kickball and hopscotch as a child.  At 19, Korysttseva found herself in America with little cash (her Ukrainian bank card was blocked), struggling with studies, fretting about her housing, and worrying about her family’s safety and survival overseas.  

“I was completely beside myself, and by myself,” she says, describing the turmoil and stress.

Koryttseva, who enjoys economics, mathematics, and logistics, said she feels that she can equip herself with the finance and management skills that can help rebuild the post-war Ukrainian economy.  She zealously tackled her studies, earning a 3.85 grade point average while also participating in extracurricular opportunities and internships. She participated in the development of a mathematical model for a Ukrainian logistics company that assessed and improved product transportation. She interned in General Electric’s corporate finance unit. She began to help a charity, Kharkiv-Phoenix, which supports Ukrainian hospitals.

Koryttseva was a member of Ukraine’s National Climbing Team, recognized as a master-level competitor. No such program existed locally, so Koryttseva started a sport-climbing club in 2021, a group that now boasts 100+ members. In 2022, she competed in the World Championship and World Cup on behalf of Ukraine. She also won gold and silver in the USA Climbing Southeastern Collegiate program.

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Children are often encouraged to be artists. For Zoe Peters, that encouragement came from her grandma, who never fails to tell stories of the youngster unraveling rolls of paper down a hall to create ten-foot-long comics.  

The former hallway cartoonist credits the St. Petersburg campus’ Innovation Scholars program with helping her envision a pathway to turn her love of art into a business.  An entrepreneurship major, Peters says that the program helped her connect with the founder of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, an organization that helps artists via funding, promotion, and advocacy. Peters landed an internship there, updating its website and tackling a variety of programs and initiatives. She applied skills learned in her entrepreneurship classes related to sustainability, long-term impact, and volunteer recruitment. The alliance soon hired her as a creative projects coordinator.

Peters credits the Judy Genshaft Honors College with fueling her desire to blend her business, the arts, and community interests. She says a class discussion there about equity, funding, and operations in the art space inspired her to start her own design business serving arts organizations and businesses. Similarly, she used an entrepreneurship course to explore and create tech that could help artists diversify their income.

Peters previously served as a USF Ambassador on the St. Petersburg campus. Today, she volunteers as a graphic designer with the Warehouse Arts District Association and Keep St. Pete Lit. Peters received the COMPASS “First-Year Student of the Year” award in 2021 and the Broadway Star of the Future award for Outstanding Playwriting in 2020.

Yashima Peart is proud of her Jamaican roots and her parents there. She says the island nation is often called the “home of the hustlers,” referring to the dogged, determined, go-getter spirit that bootstrapping entrepreneurs with little formal education display. Peart watched both of her parents build small businesses that supported the family and observed that when she grew up, she wanted to be “like the women on TV who wore pantsuits and sat in board meetings making important decisions.”  She decided that to make that happen, she needed to study business in America.

At USF, she discovered that her visions of power suits came with a lot of work.  She credits guest speakers in a business skills class (and the instructor) for helping her see that the work could be fun if it was something she was passionate about and that she could combine her love of numbers with her interest in technology. She decided to double-major in accounting and business analytics and information systems. The Judy Genshaft Honors College student has maintained a 4.0 grade point average in both majors while also working two part-time jobs, volunteering with the American Red Cross, and serving as an Orientation Team Leader.  She is a member of the Accounting Society and one of her part-time jobs is as a student assistant at USF’s Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy.

Peart will be serving as an intern with Big 10 accounting firm Baker Tilly this summer and Big Four accounting firm KMPG has already offered her an internship for the summer of 2024!

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Faith Marcus is driven to turn adversity into opportunity. From her grandfather, the son of a sharecropper who became a decorated veteran in the Navy, she learned the value of dedication and determination. 

She is dreaming big and making the most of her opportunities at USF because she knows the hardships of the lack of access to education.

Due to the pandemic, Marcus spent her first year in college online. When she was finally able to step onto campus, she wanted to make the most of her three years at USF. She knew she had to get involved fast.

She held leadership positions in USF’s Accounting Society, Women in Pre-Law Society, and Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting honor society.

In these circles, she quickly found camaraderie with like-minded peers who are passionate about accounting, leadership, and community service.

In Beta Alpha Psi, she serves as a committee chair, tutors accounting students for free, and competes as a presenter. She placed second in the Grant Thornton Speech Competition for her presentation on “How to Play the Violin.”

This past summer, Marcus interned as an auditor at BDO, a top-10 accounting firm. She will return as an international tax intern in BDO’s Dallas office this summer. After, she will start at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Her ultimate goal is to become a CPA and lawyer. As she continues her academic journey beyond USF, she wants to pay homage to the path paved by her grandfathers while creating a legacy of her own.

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At graduation in May, Taher Saifuddin Abbas will be recognized twice as a King O’Neal Scholar, an honor recognizing those who earn an undergraduate degree with a 4.0 grade point average. Why twice? Because the international student from Bangladesh will earn two bachelor’s degrees, one in finance and one in quantitative economics, with a minor in business analytics and information systems, with a perfect GPA.

Abbas served as a summer global business intern at Amgen and did so well there that the firm converted the internship into a year-long co-op. Abbas says he gained valuable skills in project management. Working with Amgen executives, he says also saw how group projects in class are not that dissimilar to those in the workplace. 

He communicates using eight languages: five spoken (Bangla, Hindi, Gujarati, Spanish and English) and three programming (SQL, C#, and R).  Abbas is also experienced in a number of business tools, including Tableau, Oracle DB, and UiPath.  He has Bloomberg Market, UiPath Citizens Developer and Google Analytics certifications.

The Judy Genshaft Honors College student enjoys learning but does more. He has served as a resident assistant for USF Housing, been part of the Bangladesh Student Association, is a member of the Student Investment Club, and recently began volunteering for Junior Achievement. Abbas participated in a service adventure trip in Puerto Rico with the Honors College LLC. He also worked with the Haitian Education Project in Tampa, raising $10,000 to help build a school for underprivileged children in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. 

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As the granddaughter of Cuban immigrants, Stephanie England was taught two important values: no one can take your education from you, and take full advantage of life’s opportunities.

England, who is pursuing dual degrees — a bachelor’s in business analytics and information systems with a concentration in cybersecurity and a bachelor’s in management — has taken those lessons to heart during her time at USF.

A self-described lifelong learner dedicated to scholarship, England is a junior and has taken on leadership roles that reflect her fundamental belief in service.

Through her involvement with the campus, she discovered the USF Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement where she led the planning for weeklong service projects through Bulls Service Breaks, an alternative service break program.

She sets aside Friday mornings for a Tampa Bay service activity with her office, which could include going to the Hope Garden or serving meals at the Trinity Cafe.

In 2020, she was one of two freshmen inducted into the Order of the Golden Brahman. There she serves as the Alumni Relations Chair, where she helps promote a strong relationship with alumni and friends of USF. 

And this past year, she became a USF Ambassador where she represents the university at events for the alumni association, the USF president’s office, and other events in the community.

For England, her goal has always been to be involved in a variety of student organizations to grow as a leader, have an enriching college experience, and to do it through service to others.

 

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Patrick Maggio is thankful USF has afforded him a challenging and well-rounded undergraduate experience where he has excelled academically, developed professionally, and become the best version of himself.

As he prepares to graduate in May with dual degrees in accounting and business analytics and information systems, Maggio isn’t planning to leave USF just yet. He will enroll in the Master of Science of Accountancy and Analytics program before jumping into the workforce.

He’s made the Dean’s List five times and is on track to earn that honor again. Aside from the two bachelor’s degrees, he completed the honors curriculum from the Judy Genshaft Honors College.

As an undergrad, he completed an internship at Masonite this past summer and continues to work 30 hours a week in the company’s Global Business Services Accounting department. This summer, he will intern at Ernst & Young at the firm’s audit practice in Tampa.

He credits his involvement with Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting honor society, for opening up these professional opportunities. As a member of the BAP, Maggio, and his team won first place in the Best Practices Speech competition at the organization’s southeast mid-year meeting. The team will present their speech again in August at the national conference.

Outside of class, Maggio has excelled as a member of the USF Ultimate Frisbee sports club. He represented USF at many tournaments in the southeast, served as a team captain, and helped design many of the team’s workouts.

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Ngoc Phan is a recipient of the Green & Gold Presidential scholarship and came to USF from Vietnam. She speaks five languages, including Vietnamese, English, French, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. 

Phan has served as an intern twice, once with the Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank and with FPT Securities Joint Stock Company. At USF, she serves as the marketing manager for Junior Enterprise USA, vice president of the Accounting Society, and treasurer of the Economics Scholars Society.  Through these organizations, Phan works with firms to plan and host networking and recruiting events for students, aiming to help them explore careers and gain access to valuable resources.

Cultural experiences and community service is not new to her. Phan has participated in charitable and educational student organizations since high school. She believes that, in her words, “small actions could make our society better, as long as we thrive to raise awareness of more people.” As a result of her mindset and efforts, she was also awarded a fully funded diplomatic trip as one of 15 national delegates from each South East Asian country to go to Japan for a cultural exchange. The exchange aimed to increase students’ knowledge of and respect for each nation and to boost cooperation activities between the countries. She presented about Vietnam to the other delegates and attended courtesy calls at the municipality office. In addition, she met with the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs to share and represent the youth’s voice about their contribution to the future society.

My Nguyen grew up in a mountainous region where ethnic minorities lived and learning a foreign language was unattainable. But that is when she heard her first English words and fell in love with the language.

She describes listening to those sentimental English words as “an artistic symphony to my artless ears.” That love for the English language sparked her interest to travel abroad and pursue college in the U.S.

Once USF offered her the Green and Gold Presidential and Global Experience Scholarship, she knew exciting personal and professional opportunities awaited her in America.

Nguyen asserted herself and took on strong leadership roles. In her first year, she volunteered as a finance consultant for HEXA Consulting, a student-run club that offers local businesses finance and marketing services. After impressing club leaders, she serves as the HR director of HEXA. 

Her passion for consulting pushed her to join the Innovative Consulting Conference of Junior Enterprise USA where she reached the top three finalists in the Smart Banking JE case competition.

This summer, she will serve as a Discovery intern at Deloitte’s Tampa office. At USF, she works in the Student Business Services office where she administers budget databases of USF student organizations.

With each academic and professional accomplishment, Nguyen has seen herself become more self-confident, ambitious, and determined to achieve her goals. A far cry from that shy, reserved first-year college student raised in a remote, mountainous region in Vietnam. And she is prouder than ever for loving English.

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Coming from an entrepreneurial family, Pedro Breviglieri Nader was always encouraged to think of how things should be. That driving principle pushed him to take a gap year after high school where he traveled the world to find his purpose. While he lived alone in Europe and worked on his own web design company, he found that purpose: he wants to influence change by helping others achieve their full potential.

The business analytics and information systems major aims to graduate in May as a King O’Neal scholar, an honor that recognizes a 4.0 grade point average. Throughout his time at USF, he’s held true to his purpose and centered himself on being a selfless leader who gives back to the community.

In his first year, he joined HEXA Consulting, the first Florida chapter of Junior Enterprise. The student-run business gave Nader the opportunity to help local businesses develop their websites and digital marketing strategies.

Other servant leadership roles include mentoring first-year students in the Bulls Business Community and offering a helping hand to international students who were finding a home away from home at USF, as he did.

He completed two consecutive co-ops at Bristol-Myers Squibb and an internship at Goldman Sachs. He was able to use his tech skills in business intelligence and machine learning to develop an automation tool that eliminated about two hours of daily work. And as graduation approaches, he’s already accepted a job as a technology consultant for Ernst & Young, where he will be helping businesses achieve their full potential.

When faced with hardships, Maria del Carmen Perez-Soto doesn’t turn away. Instead, she adapts, takes the uncomfortable route, and finds passion in purpose. That purpose is to create an environment in the technology industry where all women, like herself, can thrive while preserving their identities.

A senior in the undergraduate Business Analytics and Information Systems program, Perez-Soto is set to graduate in May. Among her proudest accomplishments, she completed internships at Goldman Sachs and Americanas SA, served in university-wide leadership roles, and volunteered within the local community.

As a USF Ambassador, she is an official representative of USF where she advocates for students. As the director of administration, she leads logistics and manages event attendance for all Ambassadors on the Tampa campus.

She also serves as a resident assistant at Horizon Hall, where she engages with students and supports their transition to college “so that they can find their own purpose.”

It’s in that role that she has grown into a confident, well-respected leader and mentor among her peers and residents.

“Maria brings a restorative lens to help her residents solve problems when they seek her out. She is both creative and reflective when engaging with her peers,” writes one of her residential life supervisors.

Perez-Soto is proud of all that she has accomplished at USF and is grateful for the opportunities the university has given her. After graduation, she will join Carnival Cruise Line as an analyst in the company’s Miami office.

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Kha Do believes leadership is a valuable skill best used to inspire and guide others toward a common goal. That means showing others how to apply data science and machine learning to solve real-world problems.

Among his most useful data science projects: he built a machine learning model that predicted the availability of rooms for reservations at the USF library, a fake news classifier, and a Parkinson’s disease classifier.

As vice president of the Data Science Club at USF, he introduced over 100 students to the basic pipeline of a machine learning project by co-hosting workshops using Python. 

While machine learning is important, he also believes in building stronger cultural bonds. He co-founded the Vietnamese International Students Association at USF as a way to help new international students from his home country adjust to college life in the U.S.

Do personally experienced culture shock and homesickness when he first arrived in America and is hoping a stronger connection will make students feel more welcome and supported. 

The USF senior is on track to graduate in May and earn dual degrees in business analytics and information systems and quantitative economics and econometrics. 

This summer, he will be a data management intern with Bank of America. Do has interned at the bank since 2022, serving as a data analyst, analyzing predictive indicators and identifying key drivers for the most impactful social media campaigns by examining data of more than 20 million mentions of the company.

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Juliana Almeida was accepted into the Judy Genshaft Honors College after receiving around $50,000 in scholarships. She joined the Brazilian Student Association at USF as a marketing analyst, where she used social media to connect with hundreds of students and market a series of events that raised over $15,000 in sales, an experience that made her fall in love with her major. Almeida is a junior and a double major in marketing and integrated public relations and advertising.

Shortly after, she became one of the five founders of the largest student-led Brazilian conference in Florida, BRASA Connect. There, Almeida executed a marketing strategy that brought USF’s international community together – the event sold over 200 tickets and brought students from all over the country.

This year, Almeida was the chief marketing officer for USF Student Government. Through that role, she impacted people from different backgrounds on a larger scale. One of her favorite campaigns focused on food insecurity and led to over 400 items being donated to the Feed-A-Bull pantry. A program advisor described Almeida as someone who is “guided by empathy and compassion for others.”

“She has so much pride when she speaks about community excellence and how she made a positive impact within her community,” he wrote.

Almeida has served as an intern twice, once for Panasonic North America and once at Marriott Vacations Worldwide. This summer, she will intern in IBM’s Marketing Summer Internship program in New York City.

Juanita Garzon counts herself lucky. The daughter of Colombian and Brazilian parents, she comes from a multicultural environment where moving between countries, languages, and cultures is second nature. From her diverse background, she has gained adaptability and social skills that have helped her thrive at USF. She has used her time at USF to grow professionally, thrive academically, and give back to her community.

In 2019, she founded the Youth Adventure Camp in Bogota, Colombia. The summer camp serves as a refuge for displaced children affected by the armed violence between the country’s government and the rival insurgent groups.

That experience sparked a personal interest in business management. At USF, Garzon joined Delta Sigma Pi, a professional co-ed business fraternity. She serves as the chapter’s national fraternity advisor where she approves the finances of other collegiate chapters in the southern region.

Garzon is a finance and econometrics double major with an international studies minor. Since January, she has worked as an advisor support specialist at Florida Financial Advisors, helping support clients assess their financial needs. This summer, she heads to New York as a summer analyst intern in the Wealth Management division at Bank of America.

With so many exciting opportunities on the horizon, Garzon is looking forward to facing, and adapting, to the next challenges.

A self-described “clueless immigrant kid,” Jose Daniel Coronel came from Venezuela to the U.S. six years ago not knowing much about American society. He struggled to speak fluent English. He knew nothing about universities or professions.

What he did know was that he was at a major disadvantage and that he would have to play catch up to overcome the linguistic, cultural, and educational barriers to make him competitive with his peers.

Fast forward six years, and he has a lot to be proud of.

Coronel is on track to graduate in May with dual degrees in accounting and business analytics and information systems. He also has an audit job lined up at Ernst & Young, one of the largest accounting firms in the world.

While at USF, he completed two internships with prestigious accounting firms — Ernst & Young and Grant Thornton. During his internship with Grant Thornton, he helped develop a service idea called Purple Paladins that won a regional competition.

Coronel has a quiet strength that has led peers to vote him into leadership roles with student organizations, including Beta Alpha Psi, an internationally ranked accounting honors organization.

“You couldn’t find a more well-rounded college student,” said one of his accounting professors. 

In May, he will be the first in his family to graduate from an American university.

Even with a promising career ahead of him, he continues to work on improving his skill set and giving back to the USF community, a community that has helped him grow academically and professionally from that “clueless immigrant kid.”

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Jennifer Moeder has been involved in several programs that have shaped her academic and professional career. She landed an internship with the Bowie Baysoxs Minor League Baseball team as a freshman and became the Director of Funds for her sorority Delta Gamma, as a sophomore. She was also selected to be a member of the Bulls Business Community and the Business Honors Program (BHP). Through the BHP, she wrote her undergraduate thesis about “Modernization and Legacy Events” and was inspired to volunteer at the Super Bowl LV, hosted by the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. 

These experiences inspired her to apply to graduate school and through the Vinik Sport & Entertainment Management program, she has participated in various community events in the Tampa Bay Area, such as the Tailgate Taste Fest, Special Olympics Florida, and numerous 5Ks for local charities. She also served as Graduate Research Assistant for Dr. Wells and other professors providing support on research projects. 

As a result of her work ethic, she was offered a Graduate Fellowship for the Tampa Bay Sports Commission and Event Development Institute (EDI) where she was responsible for the operations and logistics of major events, managing vendor/client relationships for all EDI events, managing hospitality suites for the Valspar Championship, and coordinating all participants in Pete Alonso’s Battle for the Bay. 

In addition to these achievements, she also was on the winning team of the National Sports Forum’s Case Cup competition, a competition for graduate students in high-performing sports management programs throughout the country. 

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Brad Cecil is already a USF alumnus, having earned a bachelor’s degree in business management in three years. He is on track to graduate in May with an MBA. 

Cecil has learned to strike a delicate balance between academics and athletics as a member of the USF Football team. Though he dedicates more than 20 hours a week to football, he strives to be more than “just an athlete.”  He was elected by players and coaches to serve as team captain three years in a row — a title he earned by leading by example on and off the field. The offensive lineman was named to Athlon’s All-Conference Fourth Team and is an Honorable Mention All-AAC student-athlete. He serves on USF’s Inclusive Excellence Committee and has been on the USF Athletics honor roll several times.

Cecil also serves as the representative for the football team on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee where he advocates for the student-athletes at USF. He says he is committed to being the voice for the team when it comes to rules, regulations, and policies that affect student-athletes’ lives.

Off the field, Cecil is proud of his work with Big Man Big Heart. Cecil has leveraged his name, image, and likeness options, and with others, helped to raise over $425,000 for the charity. His specific campaign is with Bode Wyatt, a 7-year-old Bulls fan who is battling Leukemia. Cecil’s campaign has not only helped Bode and his family, but also given them a behind-the-scenes look at USF’s athletic facilities, practices, and games.

Hunter Atteberry believes in the fearless pursuit of education. He also believes in constantly pushing himself to take on challenging projects to develop a new skill or learn about a new topic.

The recent USF alumnus earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and is in his first year of graduate school in the Vinik Sport & Entertainment Management program, where he is pursuing two master’s degrees.

Some of his successful projects include spearheading a six-person team that created a million-dollar marketing campaign for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. 

He produced a talent retention plan for the PGA Tour Superstore and collaborated with international students to give a presentation on how the influences of U.S. ownership affected Wrexham FC.

Outside the classroom, he looks for volunteer opportunities to expand his skill set. He volunteered with the Tampa Bay Sports Commission to gain a better understanding of marketing and event management. Atteberry also logged volunteer hours at the United Soccer League and staffed a youth tournament where he helped kids grow as better teammates, leaders, and friends through soccer.

Atteberry is currently an intern at WMT Digital, a marketing agency that manages paid and unpaid social platforms for sports organizations. He learns new ad management platforms, creates digital marketing campaigns, analyzes campaign performance data to construct recaps for company partners, and builds new processes that improve the entire company.

He says it’s a job that challenges him every day as he continues his fearless pursuit of learning. 

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When not in class, Hailey Mathieu can usually be found on the front lines of service, giving back to the most vulnerable in the community.

When Hurricane Irma devastated her hometown of Naples, Florida in 2017, she started volunteering with the American Red Cross. She started a Red Cross Club in high school to provide relief to families who suffered losses in the hurricane.  

That commitment to service continued into college. At USF, she joined the American Red Cross Club. There she took on numerous leadership roles, serving as president for the 2021-2022 year.

She led a Missing Maps initiative to train volunteers on how to map areas using satellite imagery. The American Red Cross Club project helped add vulnerable communities that were missing from disaster preparedness maps used by first responders.

She also spends time bringing warm blankets to veterans at the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital. Her grandpa, a veteran, inspired her love for giving back to the nation’s heroes.

Aside from helping disaster victims and veterans, she spent time helping new and transfer students get acclimated to USF as a Peer Advisor Leader with the USF New Student Connections program.

And since January, she has volunteered as an undergraduate researcher at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Center and Research Institute. 

Mathieu is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in management and, after graduation, plans to complete a second bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences to become a doctor where she will be on the front lines of serving the community.

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As a freshman on the St. Petersburg campus, Fabrizio Petrozzi chose to participate in the Innovation Scholars program because it provided opportunities for students to explore their interests early on without committing the time and effort typically needed for an internship.

That exploration led him to become a resident assistant for USF Housing, where he supervised a building on the St. Petersburg campus with 370 residents.  He responded to emergencies, handled conflicts and led mediation efforts, and enforced policies. He also planned events, fostered a sense of community, and strived to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for those who called the dorm home.

Academics matter to the Judy Genshaft Honors College student, evidenced by his 3.98 grade point average and his participation in nearly a dozen intellectual and cultural events designed to broaden students’ understanding of varying disciplines and other perspectives.  He participated in another dozen such events through the St. Pete campus’ Chancellor’s Leadership Council.

The bilingual student put his research skills to work outside of campus, serving as a survey translator for a team conducting an inquiry into hurricane evacuations. He translated surveys and worked closely with the team lead to ensure that consistent, appropriate terminology was used.

He began his USF experience by exploring and his collegiate career has come full circle as he is now a mentor in the UMatter program, providing students with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to explore higher education and campus life. He has supported 13 students in UMatter.

Chase Crist has a hand in sports every day.

Whether it’s in her coordinator role at Fanatics Brands or as a graduate assistant for the Vinik Sport & Entertainment Management program, she has a front-row seat to promoting the sports industry.

As the sponsorship services coordinator for Fanatics Brands, she runs the business-to-business sales for major league teams in the MLB, NFL, MLS, NBA, and NHL. She helped generate $2.7 million in sales in six months.

As a graduate assistant, she helps to promote and recruit students for the nationally ranked Vinik Sport & Entertainment Management program.   

Not only is Crist a student in the program, but she also serves as the director of community and alumni relations for her cohort. In that role, she helps coordinate guest speakers and networking opportunities to connect her classmates with the program’s alumni.

While Crist loves sports, she needed to find an outlet that had nothing to do with athletics. That’s when she found Come to Jail with Me, a volunteer group that makes weekly visits to local juvenile detention centers.

She said the experience has been a raw, life-changing one. She hopes her visits make the juveniles feel like they are seen, heard, and loved, and that there is hope for the future.  

“My heart breaks every time I walk in there and I started this journey hoping to be a light for them,” she said. “But the reality of it is, every single time I leave, I am better because I spent time with them.”

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Caroline Keller Vieira is a highly driven professional with a passion for personal growth, community service, and making a positive impact. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree magna cum laude, double majoring in International Studies and Criminology. Seeking further education and career advancement, she is now pursuing a master’s degree in management with a concentration in human resources.

Personal development and financial independence are two things that Keller Vieira has always sought. She began her career as a desk clerk for USF’s Housing and quickly worked her way up to the position of operations assistant. Today, she has been promoted once more, serving as an assistant housing services coordinator, providing support to USF’s Housing’s professional staff team from a human resources perspective.

Strong people skills and work ethic helped Keller Vieira land a coveted internship with Tesla in 2023. She is taking remote classes and working full-time as a recruiting intern for supply chain, sourcing talent, and building candidate pipelines. In the short time she’s been with Tesla, she has connected with over 80 candidates, promoting the best candidate experience she can. 

Before Tesla, Keller Vieira held roles with several student organizations, which she credits with helping prepare her for her internships. She was an international relations manager for Junior Enterprise USA and a marketing director for HEXA Consulting. She also interned with Congresswoman Kathy Castor and volunteered with Feeding Tampa Bay, supporting the community that welcomed her. Today, Keller Vieira wants to serve as a positive influence on those who surround her.

Alex Smith loves finance. As a concurrent degree student, he is pursuing degrees in finance with a concentration in real estate and entrepreneurship and innovation, maintaining a 3.89 grade point average and participating in dozens of professional development opportunities. 

His experiences are impressive. Last summer, as a sophomore, he interned on Wall Street in New York as an investment banking summer analyst, a role that allowed him to collaborate with professionals to conduct financial analyses and evaluations for tech companies in various stages of development. He is a fellow for Diversity Leaders in Finance, a rigorous alternative investments workshop with weekly training sessions related to financial modeling, accounting, and corporate finance. He participated in a Bloomberg Financial Research externship, too, and his resume lists another dozen competitive development experiences with companies such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Guggenheim.

Smith’s list of service is equally impressive. He was a vice president of the USF Real Estate Society, where he coordinated weekly meetings. He is a member of the Student Investment Club, where he served as a research associate.  He also is a member of the Accounting Society and has served as an ACE tutor. In his hometown Cancun, Mexico, he volunteers at the National Telethon Center, serving children with severe impairments. In 2022, Smith received the Dean’s Advisory Board Leadership Award from the USF Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance. The annual honor recognizes business students who exemplify strong leadership through serving in leadership roles within the university or involvement in the community. 

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Aisha Bazlamatci has found a way to combine her loves — business, medicine, and music. She is a business management major on a pre-med track who takes an interdisciplinary approach to her academics, research, leadership, and community service.

But what do music research, mitochondrial dysfunctions, social media marketing to prevent drug overdoses, and volunteering at a student-run clinic have in common? Bazlamatci found a way.

As a paid research assistant, Bazlamatci spends many hours in the USF Music Research and Testing Lab. She administers tests to patients, scores and inputs the data, and writes papers and abstracts about the research findings. She also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Interdisciplinary Sciences at USF where she helps with the editing of journal submissions.

In 2022, Bazlamatci led a systematic review of mitochondrial dysfunctions in Alzheimer’s disease as the assistant leader for the Undergraduate Research Society at USF.

And she is the social media and marketing director for Prevent Overdose, a student organization that works to reduce overdoses among USF students and in the broader community. She also finds time to volunteer at the BRIDGE clinic, a free student-run clinic at the USF Morsani College of Medicine that serves uninsured adults in the community.

As a vice president of the Asian Students in America student organization, she builds relationships with local businesses to help find sponsorships for their banquets for charity.

Bazlamatci says each of these experiences has helped her grow, build meaningful relationships, and contribute to the health and well-being of her community.