About Me
My name is Marissa Vang. I am from Fresno, California of the hot Central Valley. I take great pride in where I come from even though many folks may not know where it is located. It is about a 3 to 4 hour drive south from Dominican University, but I knew that with the way I wanted to achieve my goals, I had to gain new perspectives from a different area.
My Experiences
I have been doing community advocacy work since my first year of high school. I began to get more involved in my second year when I suffered a sports injury that resulted in surgery. I began to get engaged in community issues. As I continued, I learned that I would like to be in the business of making dreams come true.
On the left side is a picture of North Fresno and the right side is a picture of South Fresno. These pictures were taken to show the disparities in our hometown.
How I chose Dominican
It first began with meeting an alumni. I saw how energetic and bright he was and I definitely knew if Dominican helped to produce a graduate as bright and enthusiastic as him, that this is how I would like to be after I graduate with my degree.
As I came to attend an open house tour, I learned about the small class ratios and saw the beautiful green campus with fresh air (something we don't often get in Fresno). I already knew that I would pursue my Masters Degree, so when I learned about the 4+1 MBA program, I instantly put Dominican on my list. The critical points of Dominican that I appreciate the most are the small class ratios, the 4+1 program and the tight-knit community.
My Academic Journey
I came into Dominican as a Business and Psychology double major, pondering on the idea of adding Political Science and Social Justice as minors. I was quite ambitious with my academic goals. Coming from a low-income background and being a child of refugees, if there was anything that I knew by heart, it was that education is the key to a better life. By the beginning of my 2nd year, I decided to narrow down on double majoring in Business and Psychology instead. I wanted to maximize the opportunities I had as a new Honors student and take advantage of extra credit units so I had a few semesters going over 18 units to try and fit in my Psychology courses on top of Business and Core courses. By the end of the 1st semester as a 2nd year student, I learned that Dominican was going to get a new minor, Computer Science. As a person interested in technology and knowing that coding languages will come to have the same importance and impact as knowing a foreign language, I decided to give the 1st pilot class a try. By the start of my 1st semester as a 3rd year, I brought on the Computer Science minor and added the Leadership minor. Now I was looking at a potential academic career consisting of Business and Psychology double majors and Computer Science and Leadership double minors. With my final 4th year coming up in a year, reality hit me and by the end of my 3rd year, I was a Business major with minors in Psychology, Computer Science and Leadership. After more reflection, I ended up dropping my Psychology minor and graduated as a Business major with double concentrations in Management and Accounting, and minors in Computer Science and Leadership in May of 2021. My academic journey at Dominican was certainly a long road filled with excitement, changes, and reflection.
Now, I am pursuing my Masters of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) at Dominican and am set to complete my studies by the end of the program in August 2022. While pursuing my MSBA, I am also able to work in my first full-time employment role as a Tax Analyst at a cybersecurity software company, Tanium Inc. I'm incredibly blessed to be able to be where I am thanks to the community around me.