Arts & Sciences Magazine

By Leah Gilchrist

As a first-generation college student from Lynn, Mass., and the daughter of a single mother who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, Carol Guerrero (CAS’12) came to Boston University to seek a career that would be rewarding and provide stability.

She remembers seeing a Howard Thurman quote on campus that inspired her to pursue her passions: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Guerrero has taken that to heart throughout her career—serving as a mentor for an international humanitarian agency in Ecuador, as an English teacher in Miami for Teach for America, as a pro bono attorney at a major firm, and for the past year, as an assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

For this dedication to community, Guerrero is being honored as a 2024 recipient of the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award and the Arts & Sciences I.D.E.A.L. Award.

“The way that my worldview was expanded at BU has had ripple effects within my family, and of course, in my career, but I feel the effects in everything that I do,” Guerrero says. “I really felt the institution wanted me to succeed and they created the conditions for me to do that from the beginning.”

Guerrero chose to go to BU because it offered many different fields of study and opportunities. For her, this was the perfect place to learn about herself—and a place where she learned to take a chance when opportunities came to her. And, thanks to the support of a generous financial aid package, she was able to have the “full college experience.”

At the time, she had the idea that she wanted to be a lawyer, but wove through several majors and areas of study before landing on political science with a minor in history.

She remembers a pivotal moment in her college career—sitting in a course on the U.S. Mexico border that was taught by Associate Professor of History Jeffrey Rubin. The class was smaller than many of the courses Guerrero had taken up until that point, and she knew this class would not be one where she could disappear into the background. As a result, she found herself frequenting Rubin’s office hours, and he became a lifelong mentor to Guerrero.

“What surprised me was that just by being myself, and being honest and vulnerable with Professor Rubin and with the people around me, I was able to build connections and relationships that have lasted,” Guerrero says.

The summer before her senior year at BU, Guerrero worked as an Education Policy Fellow for CARE International, an international humanitarian agency dedicated to fighting global poverty. Guerrero was assigned to be an educator and teen mentor, working with teen girls in Ecuador.

“They were looking at me as a role model,” Guerrero says. “And it made me reflect on my values, how I spoke to myself, and how I behaved. I realized I really liked mentorship, because it is a reciprocal relationship centered on growth and connection.”

This experience led her to pursue teaching after graduation. She applied to Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that enlists future leaders to carry out their mission for educational equity. She was placed at a high school in Miami, teaching English to ninth and tenth-graders.

“I thought that I was going to go to Miami and I was going to teach Spanish-speaking students who were similar to me, who just needed somebody who had really high expectations,” Guerrero says. Instead, she found herself teaching students who had fallen behind, many of whom struggled to read at a fourth-grade level when they entered her classroom.

Guerrero looked for ways to engage with her students and meet them where they were. Through her dedication to helping her students improve their reading skills, she was able to teach Shakespeare’s Hamlet by the end of the school year—seeing determination and a new found love for reading in her students.

But by the end of her Teach for America tenure, Guerrero decided to pursue her initial dream of becoming a lawyer.

Guerrero went on to Columbia Law School and after graduation became an associate at WilmerHale, a prestigious law firm in Boston that has a commitment to pro bono representation and public service. At WilmerHale, she joined a case on behalf of a man who had been racially profiled by police, which not only won a financial settlement for the victim, but also initiated systematic reform to prevent future abuse.

Guerrero says her successful work on this case is some of her proudest work, and reassured her that this was the type of work she wanted to be doing.

This was reaffirmed one day when she was back on the BU campus, serving as a mock juror for one of WilmerHale’s partners who teaches at BU Law School. When she left the class, Guerrero remembers she walked down Commonwealth Avenue, past the College of Arts & Sciences building, and thought, “I’m doing all right.”

“As the first person in my family to go to college, I was working, working, working, and hoping that it was going to work out, but I just wasn’t sure because I had no proof of concept,” she said, adding that the success “crept up” on her.

Shortly after, Guerrero went to an event where Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell spoke about being the first Black Attorney General of the Commonwealth and how her perspective impacts the work of the Office and her community, especially people of color. Guerrero was inspired.

“I thought, ‘I have to quit my job and go work for her,’” Guerrero says. “This is the vision that I want to support because it’s the same vision I had when I decided to go to law school.”

Guerrero says she knew there was risk associated with leaving her job in private practice to join the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, but was confident in the vision of the Attorney General’s Office and knew she was making the choice that was best for her.

That confidence, she says, came from her experience at BU.

“There was a time when I was at BU and I was just hoping that it was all going to work out and that I was going to have a career that was meaningful, and impactful, and provide me a certain sense of security,” she says. “I’m proud of the privilege of flexibility that I have in my career… That started at BU. And I’m even more proud that I get to mentor first-generation lawyers and law students of color because I can now speak confidently about what is possible.”