It takes guts to chase your dreams. But for Shaunelle Chester, it can take a whole lot more than that to reach them.
Her dreams took her from her home in London all the way to Newark, New Jersey, when she was just 19 years old to pursue a career in marketing. That leap of faith was only the beginning, though — to succeed, it would take hard work. To adapt to a different country and its educational system, Chester had to start at square one.
She had to enroll in a community college to prepare for the SATs, an American college admissions exam that was new to her because in the United Kingdom, the university application process is based on different exams. While she studied, she also had to work full-time to support herself and build up her resume.
Even after two years of working hard in to earn a scholarship to Rutgers University, she still had farther to go on the path to achieve her dreams. She wasn’t like most of her peers at Rutgers — not only was she a few years older, but she was also completely new to being a student in the U.S.
So when she decided to apply for an internship at Unilever before her senior year, she worried that someone with a higher GPA would get it instead. But the application process turned out to be nothing like she expected.
