Providence Senior Isabella Hurtado Expands Her Opportunities for a Future In Business
Isabella Hurtado, photo courtesy of Burns Photography
Over the summer, Providence Catholic senior Isabella Hurtado attended a Women in Business course at Purdue University. The course lasted five days, and each day participants heard from professors who described their fields and their work.
“During those five days we learned not only about business, but how to be confident and successful in a male-dominated field,” explains Isabella. “Professors taught us about marketing, data analytics, strategy, supply chain management, finance, and many other areas. This was an empowering women in business course too, so we learned about growing in confidence, identifying our passion, executive presence and influence, and self-defense.”
Isabella, second from right, with other course participants.
The course also included a case competition where participants were tasked with creating a product to solve a problem. It operated similar to the idea of Shark Tank, where participants like Isabella pitched their product plan to the judges at the end of the week.
“I chose to attend this course because I felt a little lost on my college journey,” says Isabella. “I wasn’t completely sure if business was going to be the right fit for me. This course allowed me to not only gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a business major at Purdue, but also allowed me to experience college life and meet new people.”
Her biggest takeaway from the event was how to be confident not only in herself, but confident within a business space as well.
“I am hoping to major in business and minor in Spanish,” she says. “I am also thinking about majoring in accounting or supply chain management.”
Isabella’s path to a future in business started at Providence Catholic.
“The engineering science program has helped me the most for sure,” she says. “Over these past couple years, I have been given the opportunity to learn in an exploratory way. It has also allowed me to be very hands-on and incorporate values needed for the real world. It is the type of class where what we learn comes from what we make of it, which leads us to creative thinking and out of the box ideas. We came into the class being prominently concrete thinkers, and are now being transitioned into formal thinking. This program has given me a strong foundation for the future.”
Opportunities like the business course at Purdue and science at Providence are important to Isabella because they provided a more defined experience of learning in the real-world and a future career. “A course like this is very important to me because it brings motivated young women together. It was amazing to have a comfortable environment to explore my interest in the field, and get first-hand experience. In addition to the business experience, the sense of community was astounding to be surrounded by so many brilliant women. I am very fortunate to be able to experience all of it.”
Learn more about Providence Catholic at www.providencecatholic.org.