PROFILES IN DIVERSITY: Maggie Lugo

NJCU recently hosted the Diversity Issues in Higher Education Conference, an annual event designed to provide minority students with strategies for becoming successful in both college and the corporate workforce. The keynote speaker, Lucida Plummer, the vice president of Diversity and Inclusion at Wyndham Worldwide, laid out the challenges faced by recent college graduates. “Many schools don’t put enough emphasis on the transition to the workforce,” Plummer explained. “The Academic Playbook has an emphasis on grades. When you go to a corporate setting the playbook completely changes—and you can’t opt out.”

That playbook relies on resumes, appearances, public speaking skills, and an innate understanding of the culture of the office.

One NJCU student understands that playbook from cover to cover. Maggie Lugo, an accounting major, was one of 10 students accepted into Wyndham’s newly established mentoring program. The company was impressed with Lugo’s skills and work ethic—so much so that within a six-month timeframe she was offered an internship, an extension on her internship, and then a full-time junior accounting position within the firm.

Lugo, who still attends night classes at NJCU, first came to the school as part of the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), the NJCU branch of the Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF). The EOF provides access to higher education for low-income residents who are capable and motivated, but lack adequate preparation for college study. In addition to receiving financial assistance, Lugo took advantage of the program’s tutoring and counseling services and, later, worked in the OSP as part of a work study program.

She was encouraged to apply to the Wyndham mentoring program by Louis Fein, her management professor. Lugo didn’t need much encouraging, however. “I saw it as a great way to expand my knowledge,” she says. That it did. She attended workshops, took webinars, and had luncheons with senior leaders in the company. But perhaps more valuable, the program taught her certain intangibles that aren’t easily covered in the classroom “I learned how to work with different types of people I was not used to, time management, even how to properly introduce myself to others. Things I didn’t usually think about,” she explains.

“I love my experience at Wyndham. I’m always learning something new,” Lugo says. “And NJCU has been so significant in my life. Whenever I needed tutoring in math, English, grammar,” she says with a little laugh, “my professors have always been there for me.”