{"id":13357,"date":"2021-11-08T11:51:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T16:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/?p=13357"},"modified":"2021-11-08T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T17:00:47","slug":"brito-alumni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/news\/brito-alumni\/","title":{"rendered":"Vianka Brito \u201920 on Using Communication Studies to Create Change in Her Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vianka Brito ’20 grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, as the daughter of two non-English speaking immigrants who had big dreams for her to find opportunity and success living in the United States. Growing up, Brito struggled to feel as though she had a voice or a platform to use her voice because of her background. As Brito began college at URI, the Talent Development<\/a> (TD) program marked her success in the beginning. The impact of TD on her academic career would demonstrate the need for support services for students from historically marginalized communities, and eventually direct her toward her current career path. While still in school, Brito\u2014a self-described lover of all things social and talkative\u2014fell in love with the Department of Communication Studies<\/a> in URI\u2019s College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). She ultimately graduated as a double major in Communication Studies and Human Development & Family Science (HDF) in May 2020. Now, as a work readiness coach with Skills for RI\u2019s Future, Brito reflects on how her upbringing and her time in A&S empowered her to find and use her voice to put other students into positions of opportunity access.<\/p>\n

Starting early on as an undergraduate student, Brito took advantage of the breadth of opportunities available to her to put her education in Communication Studies into action. More specifically, Brito found that as a campus tour guide she could not only exercise her communications major but also her value of supporting traditionally disadvantaged students. \u201cURI gave me a voice and a platform to do what I wanted to do,” she says. \u201cThrough all of my involvement it only added to my curiosity to work with students of disadvantaged backgrounds and students of color.\u201d As she continued to put her communications skills into practice, Brito found it felt empowering and necessary to show underrepresented and marginalized students that they can succeed in college and make an impact. She also notes that her education in A&S has impacted how she views environmental factors as lead contributors to the circumstances of struggling students rather than personal qualities. \u201cStudying Communication Studies and HDF has allowed me to see things in a different lens because I\u2019m seeing the communities and environment that they were raised in,” she says.<\/p>\n

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Brito\u2019s current job as a work readiness coach depends on her ability to spot deficiencies in systems that impact students and to disrupt them. In her role, she sees now more than ever the immense need for students pursuing and committing to the kind of work she does now. She recognizes the hesitation around post-grad career opportunities that many students and their families may have about pursuing a degree in the liberal arts. Brito\u2019s rebuttal argues for the inherent value in her education and line of work. \u201cI may not be making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the impact that I\u2019m making and just the way that I see the students shine and grow after they\u2019re given an opportunity is so rewarding,” she says. Most of all, she encourages students to be strong and seek an education that will help to accomplish things within communities struggling for resources and opportunities. For herself, she says, \u201cI want to be that person they can always count on, I hope to be that change. I can really do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more about Skills for RI\u2019s Future here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

~Written by Sabrinna Fogarty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vianka Brito ’20 double majored in Communication Studies and Human Development and Family Studies, and now works as a work readiness coach with Skills for RI\u2019s Future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":13358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13361,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357\/revisions\/13361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}