Pitt helped this senior find her voice. Now, she wants to amplify others’.

Near the end of Jaqui Hernandez-Martinez’s third year at Pitt, her mom made a discovery. She couldn’t wait to share it, nearly bubbling over with excitement by the time she got her daughter on the phone.

“Do you know about this FAFSA thing that you can apply to and get grants and scholarships?” she asked in a rush.

Hernandez-Martinez suppressed a laugh and reassured her mom that, yes, she knew about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and absolutely, she’d filed one every year.

“It was so sweet,” Hernandez-Martinez said. “She just had no idea.”

Hernandez-Martinez’s parents, who grew up in Mexico, didn’t attend college or graduate from high school, so while they have unconditionally supported their daughter’s dream of higher education, they haven’t always understood it.

In fact, Hernandez-Martinez didn’t even visit the six universities she applied to, partly due to COVID shutdowns during prime college visit season and partly due to her family’s bewilderment with the protracted application process. She chose Pitt based on a childhood trip to Pittsburgh to attend a family friend’s quinceañera. She didn’t see the campus, but the city certainly made an impression.

“I just remembered seeing it from the overlook, and I liked the city lights and the bridges and how they all connected,” Hernandez-Martinez said. “And that's essentially why I chose Pitt.” (The bridges — they do it every time.)

Despite the unorthodox way Hernandez-Martinez made her decision, it turned out to be the right one. The University’s TRIO Student Support Services team, which aids first-generation and low-income students, helped her find social and leadership opportunities while Pitt professors encouraged her to explore her passions for language, research, health care and Latin culture.

She’ll graduate from the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in May with a double major in communications and Spanish, a Portuguese minor and certificates in Latin American studies and global health.

But the degree isn’t the only thing she’ll take with her when she goes. Hernandez-Martinez took advantage of every opportunity she could to enhance her college experience and bolster her future resume.

She studied perceptions of the female body and obstetric violence in Brazil after receiving a Summer Undergraduate Research Award. She polished her Portuguese skills for the trip thanks to a Pitt Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship. And, over the past year, she’s served as a Center for Latin American Studies ambassador and undergraduate teaching assistant.

Plus, she was the business manager for both the Luso-Brazilian student organization — better known as BrazilNuts — and the Association of Latino Professionals for America.

While she’s planning to pursue graduate education, Hernandez-Martinez isn’t sure whether she’ll end up studying at Pitt or in Mexico, where much of her extended family still lives. Either way, she plans to focus her research on the impact of cultural misinformation and disinformation on Latino families. She knows the topic well. Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants who struggled to learn English and leaned on her to be an interpreter, she faced stereotypes that didn’t always fit or feel good.

Her goal is to ensure that the next generation — including her younger sisters Camila, 11, and Ximena, 6 — has a well-paved path to understanding and opportunity.

“I think we learn so much about who we are and what we value by listening to others,” she said. “If we just take a moment to hear, to listen, to people, we can really get a different take on the world around us.”

Photography by Aimee Obidzinski