UC Latino Alumni Network's first volunteer leader has traveled far, in distance and life

It was a long way from her family’s cherry farm in Prosser, Wash., to the University of Cincinnati campus. Most of her friends would be remaining near home to attend one of Washington’s state universities. But Princesa Olivera Rabinovich was determined to try a new path. She had set her sights on UC’s engineering program and its celebrated cooperative education offerings.  

“Co-op — which proved to be even more unique than I had appreciated — was one of the things that really pulled me in,” Rabinovich says. “I thought, ‘This is really cool; it’s state-of-the-art. No one else really does it the way UC does. I thought I’d try it. The worst that can happen is I come back home and attend one of the Washington schools.'” 

Rabinovich, Bus '11, had a chance to visit UC after her high school graduation when she was invited to participate in the Emerging Ethnic Engineers Program. But the opportunity conflicted with the summer cherry harvest, and Rabinovich was needed at home. She did not see UC until the day she got off the plane and moved into her dorm. 

Rabinovich found her cultural niche in UC’s chapter of Alpha Psi Lambda National, Inc., the first and largest co-ed Latino fraternity in the United States.

“I was lucky to find A-Psi, and that’s how I started getting more involved with other Latino organizations on campus,” she says. Specifically, she and fraternity sister Pamela Mallory, CAHS ’09, revived the dormant Latinx en Acción, which celebrates and supports Latino students and the community.   

In the meantime, Rabinovich reassessed her professional future. After starting out as a pre-med biomedical engineering major and working at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, she decided against a career in medicine. Because she still loved working with numbers, she transferred to the Lindner College of Business and changed her major to accounting. It was a perfect fit, and today she is a senior accountant for Nucor Logistics Group, a division of Nucor, the largest steel producer in North America. 

While there, an unexpected new door to UC opened. Todd Barnes, Bus ’04, one of Rabinovich’s colleagues, held a leadership role with the Lindner Alumni Council, and Nucor routinely sponsored a table at the college’s annual Cincinnati Business Achievement Awards. In accepting the volunteer invitation, Rabinovich began to wonder if UC had a network counterpart — a similar, Latino-based group for alumni. 

Rabinovich engages with UC in some way every day and says UC students routinely take internship positions in IT and sales within Nucor’s David J. Joseph Division. “Everything I do is based on my desire to give back,” she says. 

If you are interested in getting involved with the UC Latino Alumni Network, contact Maurice Stewart, A&S '16, Director, Alumni & Donor Experience, Diversity Outreach and Engagement, at maurice.stewart@foundation.uc.edu or 513-556-4312.

Featured image at top: Sunrise over The Commons and TUC. Photo/University of Cincinnati.