Her Story
About Dannielle
I was a stay-at-home mom for 12 years after graduating high school. I put myself back to school as a non-traditional student and earned my degree in psychology and social work through a local university. When I graduated with my undergrad degrees, I got hired at our YMCA here in Warren County as the Youth and Family Coordinator, and eventually worked my way up to director of early childhood education at that institution. In 2018, a new college opened in my town, and I applied for the recruiter advisor position. When I slid into that role, I just knew this was where I wanted to spend the rest of my career. Something about helping individuals in a rural area gain access to higher education where it doesn't typically exist, and they have to leave their homes, really spoke to me. Once I started here, I fell in love with higher ed and went back to school to get my master's degree in higher education administration while working full-time, graduating in 2024. I, with my team, built the student services department from the ground up, which encompassed advising, disability services, career service, enrollment management, and admissions. I was responsible for pulling together all the compliance within the institution. I got to be part of the accreditation study and chaired one of the chapters for the self-study that led to accreditation. When my president came to me and said she wanted me to take on this new role as Director of Community Development, I jumped at it and decided I didn't want to stop my education at my master's, so I'm now currently enrolled at Slippery Rock University for my doctorate in educational leadership with a focus in higher education.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dannielle
01What do you attribute your success to?
Hard work and dedication, belief in myself, and most definitely support from my family.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t burn yourself out right at the beginning. Build slowly and your programs and you will be successful.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My biggest piece of advice is you're gonna face many walls and blockades, but don't let others tell you that you're not capable of doing big things. You can always go around them, you can always circumvent, you can always find a way. Don't let somebody else stand in the way of what you know you are capable of.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I face in my role is that with us being a new institution, sometimes it's hard to get people to understand the validity of who we are and recognize who NPRC is as an institution. Getting people to understand that NPRC is 100% legit, that we are a credible education entity, and that our students do really get a solid foundation when they go through our programs here at the college. We're still in our infancy stage in the world of higher education institutions. We're going up against colleges that have been around for 75, 100, 150 years just in our little area. So trying to get our name recognized is part of what I do every day, trying to bring NPRC to the front of people's minds. We're literally downtown, and there's still times where people are like, we have a college? Getting into the right spaces so that the right people hear that this opportunity exists is definitely a challenge we face every single day.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Everything that I do, the basis of the philosophy for everything in my life, is how to influence people to see the best in themselves. I love to help people, I love to show people that there's so much out there, that the world isn't as awful and negative as what we see and hear on the news every single day, that there are good people, and that we have amazing neighbors, and that they are smart and capable, and they can do hard things. My most favorite day of the year, every single year, is our graduation day, and I cry every single year because I am so proud of our students. I know the obstacles that they had to face to just even be brave enough to submit that application, and then I know what they had to go through to obtain their associate's degree and the amount of hours that they had to put in along with lifing. To see everything that they fight and struggle to go through to be able to obtain that degree to make a life better for them and their family, I'm just always so proud of them. My passion really lies in helping people, helping people to see their potential. I want to make sure that I'm serving a purpose while I'm here on Earth, and that it's not just a self-serving purpose, that it's a purpose where I'm growing and helping others see what's the potential in them.
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