Argentinian Graduate Prepared for World of Possibilities

The road to success doesn’t often come in the form of a mapped-out route. Fortunately for Maria Reyna, she doesn’t mind making her own path.

Reyna was born in Villa Mercedes, a city in central Argentina. She attended a private Christian secondary school there, where she was an excellent student. But when the time came to think about college, she felt like she wanted something more.

“I wanted to be somewhere where there were opportunities, and where I could learn from and interact with people from all different cultures,” she says. “So I came to the United States.”

Reyna arrived in the Philadelphia area in 2015 and started to build her future. She secured a job as an au pair and enrolled in classes at Delaware County Community College, where she soon took an additional job in the school’s admissions office. As her studies there came to a close, Reyna knew she wanted to study marketing, and she researched the top universities in the area.

“When I looked at the top marketing companies, so many of the employees at those places came from Saint Joseph’s,” she recalls. “People around the city kept telling me how great the education was here, so it became one of my top choices.”

Reyna’s drive — and her love of learning — served her well when she arrived on campus. She took every opportunity she could find to acquire more knowledge.

“The professors would bring industry experts into the classroom, and they pushed me to network with them,” she says. “It opened my mind to all the opportunities that were available to me with a degree.”

But she didn’t wait to complete her coursework before putting what she learned into practice.

In August 2018, Reyna started selling cold brew coffee online under the label Damn Good Coffee. She sources the beans, grinds them, and packages them in large tea bags, ready for use. She builds her customer base using social media and maintains relationships with her customers through personal outreach.

Reyna finished her degree in December 2018 and now works as a paid social associate at Publicis Health Media in Philadelphia, but she’s not going to rest on her laurels. She’ll continue to absorb new lessons and grow her coffee company.

“Now that I have graduated, I continue to take webinars to learn more about marketing,” she says. “I want to keep improving and growing. I love learning.”