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Dana Brice Pacheco

Associate Director of Advising and Programs and Fellowships Lead at Beyond Barnard

Dana Brice Pacheco is an Associate Director of Advising and Programs and serves as the Fellowships Lead. In her role, she works closely with students and alums who are interested in applying for fellowships and opportunities post graduation. Before joining Barnard College in 2021, Dana worked as an assistant fellowships advisor at a large state-funded university in Philadelphia. She obtained her PhD in anthropology at Temple University, and a BA in anthropology and Latin American history at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. Dana grew up in a small Puerto Rican beach town, but both Philadelphia and Brooklyn have been home for the past decade.

What is special about working at Beyond Barnard?

What I most enjoy about my current position is being able to meet students and alums with such diverse interests, as well as engaging in discussions on a wide range of topics. Only second to that, is being able to walk along the river during lunchtime. 

How does your identity inform your work/interests/passions?

My work as a fellowships advisor is heavily influenced by my own experiences with fellowships. As a first generation college student, whose first language isn’t English, and coming from a rural town on an island, I traveled for the first time at 19 years old for a summer program where I met people from all over the U.S. This experience opened my eyes to the possibilities of going beyond my college campus and it exposed me to new career pathways. As an undergrad I thought I wanted to become an archaeologist. But this program taught me that it was definitely not the right path for me. Other opportunities like the Leadership Alliance Summer Program at Princeton and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, afforded me the time to dedicate to research career paths with hands-on experience. I feel passionately about how these opportunities can be equalizers for people with a similar background to mine.

What’s important to you in life outside of work?

When I am not working, you can almost always find me outside, finding pockets of nature throughout the city,  with my café con leche and my Kindle reading cozy mysteries.