This is a mini-profile I did on someone who makes a difference at Salve Regina. I chose Angela Augusta, a junior at Salve. After interviewing her, I created this profile on her for my Multimedia Storytelling class. I also created an Adobe Spark Video on Angela which is linked after the profile.
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Angela Augusta has always had a passion for helping others. She was the type of kid to invite others to her lunch table if they seemed lonely. Augusta is from Windham, NH, but went to boarding school at Kimball Union Academy. There, she played all varsity sports including soccer, lacrosse, and hockey. Augusta started playing hockey when she was four years old, and has been ever since. When she was young, Augusta wanted to be either a professional hockey player or a famous singer. Her biggest supporter in life is her brother Adam, who has been her motivation for everything she does.
Augusta has always wanted to help others who need it. “I love loving everyone. I think since I was a little kid, I’ve always just wanted to be kind to other people, and help other people that don’t seem to get that social recognition.” After spending time at Looking Upwards during her freshman year orientation at Salve Regina University, she immediately fell in love with the people there and signed up the next day to work with Best Buddies. Looking Upwards is a non-profit agency for adults and children with developmental disabilities based in Middletown, RI. Augusta had always known that she wanted to work in the healthcare field, but this experience helped her to nail down exactly what she wanted to do.
Augusta makes time for Best Buddies, the girls hockey team, and all of her classes. “Hockey gives me time organizational skills.” Augusta is a junior, with a major in Business Administration and two minors in Healthcare Administration and Marketing. She has been working with the Best Buddies program through Salve Regina for the past two years. “Right now, I’m doing it because it’s something that takes away the stress from the school day and playing hockey here at Salve. I want to work with disabled people when I’m older, but right now it’s a stress reliever and it just makes me really happy. It makes the people that go there happy too.” By far, her favorite experience with the program was meeting her buddy Bob, a 46-year old man with a mental disability. Augusta is very fond of Bob, saying, “Bob is my best friend. He’s outgoing, he’s friendly, he’s kind, he loves everyone he talks to, he’s literally the greatest person I’ve ever met.” Forming this friendship has made Augusta into the person that she always wanted to be. “I just love being around people, helping people, talking to people, meeting new people. And I think that down to my core i’m just a very outgoing, social, kind person. I like knowing people.”
With big plans for her future, Augusta has many ideas of what she would like to do. She has been offered two jobs by Looking Upwards, the program built to provide service to those in need. After graduation, Augusta plans to go back to school to get a bachelors in Healthcare Administration and hopefully a degree in Special Education. If she does not get a job in the healthcare field immediately after school, Augusta wants to work at a prep school, possibly in administration. If her life goes in the direction of preparatory schools, she wants to help run a Best Buddies program in prep schools so that “kids in high school get to get a taste of what it’s like working with people outside of their population.” She wants high schoolers to be more educated about other people in the world other than kids that have the same set of skills as them with no disabilities. Augusta wants to take her own experiences from high school and merge it with her determination to help people who need it. While the future is still far away, Augusta has big plans. “I want to have own facility for people with mental disabilities that I administrate, and I manage, and I take care of, and do the hiring. That’s my main goal. That would be the best career for me.”
Lauren O'Neil 