Meet Angel Lupian Alvarez: How This Accounting Major Found Belonging and Landed a “Big Four” Internship
At a career fair at the CU Denver Business School, Angel Lupian Alvarez’s hands were shaking as he tried to pass out his resume. In his first year at the university, he had never been in a professional, corporate environment before. He didn’t know what to say when he approached the recruiters’ tables. “I was just trying to survive a conversation,” Lupian said.
Three years later, the first-generation student is preparing to graduate with a bachelor of science in accounting and an internship position at Ernst & Young (EY), a “big four” accounting firm. He’s found his place at CU Denver and in the business community, thanks to resources like the First-Generation and Multicultural Business Program (FaM), TRIO Student Support Services (TRIO SSS), and the Business Career Center (BCC), which showed him he belonged and gave him practical insights to empower him to reach his goals. Now, networking events like his first career fair are a breeze. “I walk into those rooms knowing that I belong there,” he said.
Choosing CU Denver
Growing up in Green Valley Ranch, a neighborhood in northeast Denver, Lupian knew he wanted to go to college. CU Denver’s Pre-Collegiate Development Program (PCDP) was one of the first resources he tapped into. The program provides local ninth graders through high school seniors with programming designed to motivate them to go to college and to be better prepared when they get there. Incidentally, it also introduces participating students to the Auraria Campus. “I got used to the commute to the campus,” Lupian said. “And, I already had a community with Pre-Collegiate.”
He decided to enroll at CU Denver and was able to live at home all four years and commute to class by light rail. The familiarity and accessibility of the campus were only part of the draw for Lupian, though. He knew he was interested in business, and CU Denver had a program that was located in the city’s business district in the heart of downtown Denver—exactly where he’d need to be. And, through PCDP, he had started to learn about CU Denver’s resources to support first-generation students. “It sounded like an amazing program for me since I am a first-generation student, and I knew I would need that support,” Lupian said.
People Who Made a Difference
Like many college students, Lupian also needed a job. He had a work study award in his financial aid package and found a qualifying position as an office assistant for TRIO SSS, a program that supports first-generation, low-income, and disabled students with academic and other resources.
His boss, Henry Ornelas, became one of his most supportive champions. “Henry was always helping me with everything, pointing me toward the right places and answering all the questions I had,” Lupian said. In his second year, Lupian applied and was accepted into the TRIO SSS cohort. Now, he’s graduating as a peer mentor for the program, helping students like him find their way at CU Denver as others once helped him. “I wanted to give back, and becoming a mentor at TRIO was a great way to do that,” Lupian said.
Lupian has a lot to offer his mentees. He now knows his way around the Business School and the Denver business community thanks, in large part, to FaM. The program provides first-generation and multicultural Business School students with academic success strategies, mentors, training, networking opportunities, and workshops that help develop professional and leadership skills. But for Lupian, the best part about FaM was the people he met in the program, whether they were peers navigating the same challenge he was or FaM’s Executive Director Nimol Hen. “She was there for me since day one,” Lupian said. “I don’t think I would be where I am right now without her.”
When Lupian started going to networking events with his FaM peers, he saw people with similar backgrounds to his thriving in that environment. “They would just walk into a room and talk to a manager at some big company and not even flinch,” Lupian said. “That definitely helped a lot.” Ornelas’ enduring support helped a great deal, too. “Before I went to an event, he would say things like, ‘You got it. You’re going to do great. You belong there.’” Lupian said. Before long, he believed it.
Video: Meet Angel
Choosing the Right Path
Lupian began his journey at CU Denver as a finance major. At the time, he wasn’t quite sure what to study, but he knew he had a way with numbers. His professor, Senior Instructor of Accounting Cynthia Kennedy, encouraged him to consider accounting instead. After his first class, he was hooked. “With accounting, you can always do finance, because accounting is the basic language of business,” Lupian said. “Everything I see now, I am imagining the accounting behind it. I just really like the puzzle.”
He completed an internship at Charles Schwab, which gave him hands-on experience in the finance industry, but his heart still led him back to accounting. He made use of resources like the Business Career Center to get help dialing in his resume and practicing for interviews, which he secured at three of the “big four” accounting firms. He chose the one Kennedy had encouraged him to apply to, EY, because of the connections he made with people at the company throughout the interview process and because of its professional development resources. He’ll begin working as an intern upon graduation. Meanwhile, he also plans to earn his master’s in accounting from CU Denver through the 4+1 program, which enables motivated students to leverage some of their undergraduate coursework to complete their master’s degree more quickly and cost-effectively.
Lupian was always laser-focused on maximizing resources and ascending in his career. What he had to learn as a student at CU Denver was that the most important resource he has is his belief in himself—and that the people around him can make all the difference in finding that confidence. “Everything’s been so great since day one,” Lupian said. His hope for his TRIO SSS mentees following in his footsteps? “They’re able to see that they’ve always belonged,” he said. “I just have to make sure they don’t stop searching before they realize that.”