Vanessa Cisneros is the Associate Director of the Office of Financial Aid. She is in charge of TC’s student loan operations, getting involved in everything from answering questions from students and helping process loan applications to troubleshooting any problems.

 

Vanessa grew up in Yonkers and attended Pace University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in finance. With thoughts of a career on Wall Street, she headed to Morgan Stanley after graduation but found the work unfulfilling. So, she took a job as a financial aid officer at the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (LIM) in midtown Manhattan in 2005. (LIM is the nation’s only college devoted to the business of fashion.) She came to TC in 2007 as an assistant director and initially coordinated TC’s federal work study program.

 

For Vanessa, the best part of the job is the students. She says she has enjoyed working with students since her undergraduate days at Pace, when she took a job at the campus library. “Helping students finance their education is the best, especially those students who come in, and they are in despair. They have a few more classes to go, and they don’t want to take out any more loans. They need a scholarship or some other form of assistance, and for me to be able to help those students finish their degrees is very rewarding. That’s the purpose for us being here in financial aid.”

 

She’s deeply committed to helping minority students finance their educations and often takes part in financial aid workshops and information sessions in New York City to let Latino high school students know that there are resources available for them to continue their education. “I try to help minority students understand the whole financial aid part of higher education. So many times, these students hear that it’s too expensive, and they don’t understand that they can go to college, and there are resources available.”

Did You Know?