Fernanda Sulantay overcame many obstacles on her path to success. A full-time chemical engineering PhD student at Yale, a content creator behind popular Instagram and TikTok accounts dedicated to sharing her experience, and a mother twice over, she is as accomplished as she is busy. Still, looking at these achievements alone does not consider the difficult and unique path she took to get where she is.
Born in El Salvador to working-class parents, Sulantay immigrated to Connecticut when she was nineteen. She spoke little English but was determined to pursue her education and enrolled in her local community college after less than a year of after-work English as a second language classes. Starting off, Sulantay’s studies were challenging as she worked to pay for her education and learn English along the way, but she soon realized that community college was an ideal environment for her. She appreciated how the small class sizes, low cost, and close connections between students and professors allowed her to flourish as she began her engineering education.
“In high school and middle school, whenever I took math or chemistry and all these science courses, it was super fun for me to figure out how the world works,” she says. Like many chemical engineers, Sulantay saw chemical engineering as a great way to combine her passion for chemistry and math.
When she finished her time at community college...
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