Embrace Your Identity for Success in Grad School and Beyond

September 8, 2025

By Katya Hrichak

Finding your motivation and working hard are key to succeeding in graduate school and in life, but so, too, is staying true to yourself, shared Erika Tatiana Camacho, Ph.D. ’03, during the Summer Success Symposium on Aug. 19.

Camacho, the Berriozábal Endowed Chair of Mathematics and professor of mathematics and neuroscience, developmental and regenerative biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio gave the alumni keynote, titled, “From East L.A. to the Ivory Tower – A Mestiza’s Story of Empowerment and Transformation in STEM.”

An ethnic mestiza, and as someone who identifies as Mexican and American, Camacho found herself struggling with dueling identities. But she found herself feeling like an academic and cultural mestiza as well: She is both a mathematician and a biologist, and both someone who grew up in a poor neighborhood that did not highly value education and someone who earned a doctorate. Finding her place as an undergraduate student at Wellesley College, a graduate student at Cornell, and even as a tenured professor with the dream of starting a lab that spanned disciplines was often a challenge.

“It’s always been this kind of intersection of both of them, but not really fitting the mold of one or the other, really being my own blend,” she said. “That has caused a constant fight within me, in terms of trying to understand ‘Where do I fit in?’ and ‘Who do I identify with?’ when there are all these physical and imaginary borders that have been put upon me.”

She told the new and returning research graduate students in the audience that they, too, are mestizas in a certain sense: Anyone who has stepped into a place they are not familiar with or outside their comfort zone can relate to these feelings. What is important to remember, she said, is not to be embarrassed or apologetic, but to retain who one is regardless of the circumstances and understand that we are always changing.

“The thing I realized is that whoever you are is evolving. It’s not static,” Camacho said. “You have to constantly be reinventing yourself, recreating yourself, so you are able to embrace holistically who you are, and as you start to learn more about what your identities are, you have to embrace them. And you have to not allow people to tell you who you should be.”

By refusing to let anyone define who she is, Camacho shaped her education as well as her career. Now, she leads a lab which combines mathematics and biology to study metabolic adaptation and protective stress responses in diseased and aging retinas.

“I’m always willing to adapt and transform and never give up,” she said.

This year’s Summer Success Symposium also featured an opening plenary session, “Developing a Strategic Mentor Network,” with Evelyn Ambríz, postdoctoral scholar in the Graduate School; a flash talks and engagement session, “Caring for Your Health and Well-being,” featuring Associate Dean for Graduate Student Life Janna Lamey, Graduate Student Life Advisor Olivia Hopewell, and Assistant Director of Counseling and Psychological Services and Community Liaison for Indigenous Students Wahieñhawi “Hawi” Hall; and an interactive and student-facilitated session, “Knowledge in Action: Shared Strategies for Sustainable Success.”

This event was sponsored by the Graduate School Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement, the College of Engineering Office of Inclusive Excellence, and the Cornell Chapter of the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society and was modeled in part after PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP Summer Success Institute. The launch and institutionalization of the Summer Success Symposium benefited from support from the 2016 ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education and NSF under Award No. 1647094, CIRTL AGEP Transformation Alliance from 2016-2022.