Congratulations to Our 2023 Next Step Contest Winners!

Class of 2023, you did it! Between late-night study sessions, on-campus or Zoom classes, and the trials and errors you learned in the last few years, we know how hard you worked to earn your undergraduate degree. Now that this chapter has come to an end, you deserve to celebrate your next after college, and we couldn’t be more excited for you. 

Next Step Contest Winners

This year, Forté held a Next Step Contest for our community of undergraduate women who shared a picture of what their next step is after college. Whether it’s a summer internship, business school, or just taking a well-deserved vacation! We had so many amazing applicants so we decided to add another winner. The five winners are Gigi Oyola from George Washington University, Jasselle Garcia from Smith College, Esther Xiang from Harvard College, Angelica Bolaños from the University of Houston, and Aesha Mehta from Rutgers Business School – New Brunswick!

I am excited to share with you all that I will be working as a Global Markets Analyst within the Sales and Trading division at RBC Capital Markets in New York City, New York as my next step post undergrad.” – Gigi Oyola

I will be doing a Fulbright in Spain as an ETA after college.” – Jasselle Garcia

I just graduated from Harvard where I studied Psychology and Education! A little bit about me: I love people. I feel so drawn to people and their stories and struggles. Part of this comes from moving around the world! I’ve lived in three countries, four provinces, seven states, fourteen cities, and attended fifteen schools. After graduation, I plan on traveling the world and sharing the stories of my fellow humans through film. I want to provide an open platform for people to reflect on the experiences, people, and ideas that have defined or changed who they are. Interacting with people and hearing their stories, dramatically changed the way I looked at the world. My conversations, questions, and thoughts taught me incredible things, leading me to value my differences because they make me who I am. Many of the social conflicts of our world today stem from a failure to understand those who are different from us. How can we expect to understand those that we have never interacted with? Why don’t we reach out to those different from us to at least try to understand and empathize with them? These are the types of questions I ask myself, and while I don’t know all the answers and I may never know them—that will not stop me from pursuing them with all my heart.” – Esther Xiang

After graduation I will be on the job search and in the summer I will be attending the Harvard Business School Summer Venture in Management Program (SVMP)” – Angelica Bolaños

x

I will be pursuing real estate post graduation.” – Aesha Mehta