By
Kristin Borrero
Hometown: Westford, Mass.
Major: Finance, minor in philosophy
Notable Activities/Achievements: Teaching assistant, Carroll School of Management Portico program; president of the Student Consulting Team; co-president of Management Consulting Club; Jenks Leadership Program; member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the business honor society, and Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society; completed 2011 Boston Marathon to raise funds for the Boston College Campus School.
Post-Graduation Plans: consultant, LEK Consulting, Boston. Accepted to Harvard Business School in 2013 under the 2+2 program.
Overview: Mentoring middle school students in Boston for the PULSE program as a freshman awakened Borrero to the fact that she liked to help make things better. She took up a finance major and set off on a path to help companies run better, University offices work more efficiently and students get more out of their BC experience. She has worked as a student consultant on projects as wide-ranging as the Haley House Bakery Cafe, Pine Street Inn fundraising and campus sustainability efforts. She also taught healthy nutrition and fitness habits to students at Edison Middle School in Brighton.
Q: What has had the most profound effect on your BC experience?
Everything I’ve done at BC has been an outgrowth of my involvement freshman year with the PULSE program. I volunteered at Tenacity, a program in Boston that teaches children from the inner city how to play tennis and offers mentoring and support for school and other activities. That really set the course for my education. I met these middle school students whose experiences were so much different from mine. But I saw I could also make an impact in their lives, even if I was just 18. I saw that I could use my time in college to do something that was good for other people and PULSE allowed me to see that. That started everything for me.
Q: What did you enjoy most about being a teaching assistant for Portico, CSOM’s introductory ethics course for freshmen?
Portico was another chance for me to share from my experiences and what I’ve gained from my time here with freshmen at BC. Serving as a mentor to 10 freshmen CSOM students, I tried to help them find the value they could add to the campus. A mentor is someone I wish I had when I was a freshman and had questions about registering for classes or how to get involved on campus. Hopefully I served my students in that capacity.
Which class stands out as your favorite?
Financial Accounting with [Senior Lecturer] Amy LaCombe. It’s financial accounting, so you have to take it as part of the CSOM core, so it might not be everyone’s favorite subject. But Professor LaCombe has such an energetic teaching style and a passion for the subject. She cares so much about all of her students, which made me want to be there and learn the material fully.How has your time at BC changed you?When I came to BC, I thought I would just be one of 2,000 students in my class. But I saw that each one of us can make a difference. It has given me a completely new outlook on life and has shaped almost all of my decisions...I think I’m a lot more confident in my leadership skills than I was when I was a freshman. I’ve taken on a lot of roles in projects on campus and at non-profits off campus and those have given me the skills to speak to groups and motivate other students. My experience as a teaching assistant in the Portico program has helped me become a good mentor and that is something I learned over the past few years.
What will you miss most about BC?
I am going to miss many of the people who I have become close with on campus. These people have shaped the person I have become, and in my opinion the cultural education I have had at BC has in many ways been more transformative than my academic education. I will especially miss two-hour long lunches at Hillside and stopping into the CSOM Dean’s office to visit Sara Nunziata, Erica Graf and Amy Donegan, who have all made an impact on my time here.
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