Bianca Romero
Assistant Director of Student Engagement and Residence Life, Adjunct Professor, Bay Path University/Cambridge College: Age 29
Bianca Romero’s title is a long one, and indeed, it encompasses quite a few responsibilities, she said.
“But my biggest goal is always to help our students feel like Bay Path and Cambridge are their home away from home — to help them engage and find themselves,” she explained. “Every day, I think about how each student can change the world, and what I can do to help them get closer to their goals and bring their skills outside campus and into the community.”
Romero’s work can be fun — hosting fun events and promoting residential life — and less so, when having tough conversations around crisis response and student safety. She founded and scaled up residence hall associations at both institutions, led new student orientation strategy, implemented RA and RD training programs, launched a graduate student association, and much more.
“But the goal, every day, is to help students become leaders,” she said, and that applies to her work as an adjunct professor as well, teaching classes in legal studies, business, and criminal justice. “I remember being in their shoes, being nervous, having imposter syndrome as a first-generation college student. Whether it’s online or in person, I think about those moments and ask myself, how can I connect with students no matter where they are academically, financially, or emotionally?”
Early on, Romero took steps toward a career in law enforcement, graduating with honors from the NYPD Cadet Corps program aspiring to work in community policing, and later shifted gears, enrolling at Bay Path for legal studies, hoping to one day defend and advocate for people. But she then became student government president and met Bay Path’s then-president, Carol Leary, who mentored her. “I never in my life thought about being a college president until I met her,” Romero said, but that is, indeed, her current long-range goal.
“As a child, I wanted to be a businesswoman, a lawyer, in law enforcement, in community building — but education holds all of those things,” she explained.
“When you’re able to educate and give opportunities to people who never thought they’d have those opportunities, you are changing the world,” she went on. “You’re making the world a better place and building communities. Now it’s not only you, but others who can go out and use what you’re teaching them to make the world a better, safer, happier place, especially in the climate we’re in now.”
—Joseph Bednar
