'Class of changemakers': Meet 5 incoming students already on the move
Five students, five hard-won beginnings
Their ambitions reach from hospital rooms and courtrooms to soccer pitches and the stars. Some are following dreams born in early childhood; others are claiming futures they once thought were out of reach.
Meet five incoming students whose journeys to The Beach reveal a class defined by resilience, curiosity and a determination to create change.
They’re just getting started.
Chimnazaekpere Nwala
Chimnazaekpere Nwala was 4 when she announced that she would become a doctor. Her family laughed. She didn't.
“I was a raging empath,” she said. “I would cry a lot as a child because I just felt bad whenever I would see someone in pain.” To her young mind, the answer was simple: “The best way to help someone was to heal their body. And so, doctor.”
Born in Nigeria, Nwala moved to the United States at age 9, and now lives in Long Beach. Nwala will study biology as a President’s Scholar, with an eye toward cardiology or neurology — “the two things that power the body.” As a Long Beach resident and President’s Scholar, she is especially excited about the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research and begin turning a childhood conviction into a career.
She sees the same sense of purpose in her peers.
“We are a class of changemakers,” she said.
Olivia Yu
Olivia Yu came to Long Beach carrying two ambitions that rarely share a résumé: Soccer and astrophysics.
The Phoenix native has been chasing the first dream since she was 2. When it came time to choose a university, however, she wanted more than the chance to compete at the Division I level. She wanted women’s soccer coaches who recognized her potential, and found them at Long Beach State.
“One of the main reasons I chose to play here was that I could tell the coaching staff, specifically Mauricio (Ingrassia), really believed in me as a player,” she said.
Away from the pitch, Yu loves to read, has taken up crochet and calls herself "a curious person." She is majoring in physics so that, after her soccer days are over, she can pursue another of her curiosities — astrophysics — as a career.
Marco Garibay Murillo
Marco Garibay Murillo arrived at The Beach with something to prove — and two older siblings already waiting for him. Growing up in Long Beach, he saw CSULB as part of both his community and his family’s story. “It felt more like continuing something my family had already started,” he said.
It was a path that once seemed far from certain, though.
In sixth grade, a teacher told Murillo he was dumb, then repeated it to his parents. For a while, he believed it. Then, in high school, he raised his grades, regained his confidence and ultimately earned both a President’s Scholarship from CSULB and a place in the University Honors Program.
A summer studying the stock market has Murrillo considering business or finance. But making it this far already proves one thing: Other people don’t get to decide what he is capable of.
Elizabeth Ruiz
Elizabeth Ruiz spent more than 20 years cleaning other people’s houses before allowing herself to imagine a different future.
Ruiz came to the United States from Jalisco at 16. She would raise three children before enrolling in ESL courses at 40. Even then, she doubted that college — or financial aid — was possible for someone like her. Then a woman at Long Beach City College told her that it was.
“I can tell you that lady changed my life forever,” Ruiz said.
Now an associate degree holder, ESL Club president and President’s Scholar, Ruiz plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting and eventually a master’s degree. Her dream is to create a cleaning business of her own, one where she sets fair prices, pays people what their work is worth and helps students who still feel that they are “in the shadow.”
When asked to picture that future, she paused. “I’m getting goosebumps right now,” she said.
Kaitlyn Lopez
Kaitlyn Lopez had nearly committed to another university when The Beach — the school she had wanted all along — offered her a place two weeks after decision day.
“I was so happy,” she said. “Long Beach has always been my dream school.”
Raised in South Central Los Angeles by a single mother who immigrated from Guatemala, Lopez wanted a campus where she could feel safe, welcomed and accepted. She found that in CSULB’s diversity — and already has thrown herself into Beach XP, the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and its Residential Bridge program.
Lopez plans to become a criminal defense attorney because, she said, “some people don’t ever get the justice they deserve.” She wants to advocate for people who have not been given a fair chance, make her family proud and someday help her mother retire.
“We want to break cycles,” she said of her classmates. “We want to build. We want to change the world.”
