By Mary Braswell

As a sophomore in high school, Cecy Rivera set out to fix a problem she saw in her Orange County community.

Fellow students from low-income families like her own showed great promise, but they lacked the communication and leadership training needed to fulfill their potential. So Rivera secured a grant to co-found and co-teach a program to help bridge the skills gap.

That early success fueled Rivera’s activism and ambitions, and she has since won multiple honors, including a Bank of America Student Leaders award for civic-minded youth and an Obama Foundation scholarship for public service. At a ceremony at the United Nations, she was celebrated as a “Hispanic Star: Changemakers Shaping America.”

The UCLA Luskin Public Affairs major spent fall quarter in the intensely selective White House Internship Program, coming back to California just in time to cast her vote as the youngest member of the state’s 2024 Electoral College slate.

All of this by age 19.

“Public service is the one pathway that encompasses everything that I love and allows me to help people,” Rivera says.

Her earliest memories reveal a gift for creative problem-solving. Born in the United States, the daughter of farmworkers was raised in Mexico until age 7.

“What I learned during those years was how to make something where there is nothing,” she recalls.

“We would have art projects and classroom projects, and my family just didn’t have the money to buy the supplies,” so Rivera figured out how to make paintbrushes from string and pencils, and paint from whatever vegetables were in the house.

“All of those experiences taught me how to be scrappy, and I think that’s such a big asset now.”

Cecy Rivera casting her vote as a California elector in 2024 …

Upon her return to the U.S., Rivera was a star student, eventually attending a dual enrollment high school on the campus of Santa Ana Community College that enabled her to graduate with a liberal arts associate’s degree.

Off campus, she sought out experiences that would satisfy her thirst for learning: an apprenticeship at the UC Irvine School of Law, an internship with U.S. Rep. Lou Correa — and a financial literacy course she took at age 15 where she realized many of her peers were at a distinct disadvantage.

“Part of that program was creating a ‘Shark Tank’-like pitch of a business venture. And when I looked around the room, I felt that the students from my low-income community, most of them first-generation, weren’t actively participating.

“That’s when it hit me. These students have never had a course on public speaking, on interviewing, resume prep, on how to communicate, how to negotiate with one another, all of that.”

She drew on the skill she had honed since childhood: identifying a challenge and brainstorming a solution.

With her friend Avery Ngo, Rivera launched Competitive Edge, a program that would teach critical thinking, assertiveness, team-building, email etiquette and other professional skills to more than 700 disadvantaged students.

The venture, which debuted when Rivera was in 12th grade, was made possible with seed funding and mentorship from the Dragon Kim Foundation, an Orange County nonprofit supporting youth empowerment and entrepreneurship.

“At that point in my life, I had gone through so many supportive programs … and had the opportunity to experience how other people behave, the way they carry themselves, their demeanor,” Rivera said. “And so I knew that I had to give that back to the students, to show them an example of what else was out there.

“And by building this organization, I was able to find out the things that I was good at, like making community partnerships and reaching out to people and creating a curriculum. I loved it.”

After this first entrepreneurial experience, doors of opportunity opened, one after the other. Rivera’s internship with Congressman Correa led him to support her participation as a California elector. And the coveted White House internship brought a series of “wow moments,” including watching Marine One lift off and meeting the vice president, first lady and Cabinet officials.

“As a little Mexican girl who could never even dream of anything like this, it was incredible,” she says.

Now at UCLA, she’s on track to complete her Public Affairs major and Education minor in three years, with plans to graduate in 2026. She aspires to develop new school designs and curricula that broaden opportunities for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

This summer, Rivera will travel abroad to study innovative educational models and bring their lessons back home. The trip will be funded through her Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship, a two-year program to shape the next generation of leaders.

“One thing that we can do right now is tailor our curriculum to be more individualized, to bank on the unique interests and talents of each student, to get them to explore and expand their horizons,” she says.

“Why not make school, the one place where students spend so much of their time, the place where they grow the most?”