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Breakthrough Profile

Meet Viviana Ornelas! Viviana applied to Breakthrough Santa Fe  because of the resources it could offer on her path to college. After her second summer with the program, she has learned that Breakthrough is as much about academic achievement as it is about personal growth and community. This 8th grade student relishes the opportunity Breakthrough provides to learn and have fun at the same time, and she is grateful for the incredible people she has met through the program.

A little about Viviana: She is fueled by a boundless intellectual curiosity wherever she is! Her favorite class at Breakthrough last summer was science, where she dove head-first into a new lab experiment almost every day (especially the one where they made ice cream). Viviana knows that discovery does not only happen in school—this is why she also fills her time drawing and playing volleyball and soccer.

The other deeply motivating factor in Viviana’s life is a sense of responsibility to her community—she is currently pursuing an independent research project at Monte del Sol Charter school about Mexican culture in an effort to better understand and connect with her roots. It is this combination of her drive for discovery and her desire to contribute to a community that has motivated Viviana to go into medicine after graduating from college. Viviana has already started to explore the field as a member of her school’s HOSA club (Health Occupation Students of America), for which she presented an independent research project about teen dating at the 2018 HOSA National Leadership Conference.