Young Alumna of the Year Award
Angela Melchor Ortiz, Nurs ’10
Gurnee, Ill.
Angela Ortiz lives the Jesuit principle of cura personalis, or caring for the whole person, as an intensive care nurse at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Illinois. She feels honored to be at the bedside at intensely difficult moments in patients’ lives. “I love being a part of a team that comes together to promote healing, provide comfort and care for the whole person,” she says.
Angie’s academic path was deeply influenced by her parents, who immigrated to the United States from a small, rural town in Mexico. “They instilled in me the immense privilege it was to be able to pursue higher education,” she says.
Drawn to Marquette by the four-year direct-entry nursing program, Angie says college was “uncharted territory” for her as a first-generation student. She found academic and financial support in the College of Nursing’s Project Beyond, a program that encourages students from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue a rewarding career in professional nursing. “The community that Project Beyond built for me and the opportunities it gave me to see myself as a leader,” she says, “are a large reason why I am so passionate about mentorship and uplifting others,” including her hospital’s newest nurses.
She works to Be The Difference in other ways as well: providing Spanish-language community health outreach, gathering donations to support victims of domestic and sexual violence and helping with book drives for children in her community.
A mom of two, Angie plans to complete a graduate degree in nursing to become an acute care nurse practitioner in critical care settings. “I thank God for using me as a vessel through which his healing can be done,” she says.
Name a Marquette faculty member who had an impact on you, and how.
I could name so many! But the person with the greatest impact was Dr. Ruth Ann Belknap. I always say that when Dr. Belknap introduced me to nursing research, she introduced me to myself. She took me under her wing as a research assistant working with Latina women on the south side of Milwaukee, and I saw myself reflected in their work and their stories. Dr. Belknap was always so genuine about empowering others, and she gave me the tools that I needed to find my voice and step into my power as a first-generation Latina in nursing.
Name someone (past or present) with whom you'd like to have dinner.
I would like to have dinner with Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first woman president. I am inspired by her professionalism, tenacity and leadership in a historically male field. She is an accomplished climate scientist who uses her platform to speak up for women’s, worker’s, LGBTQ and indigenous rights and her presidency represents progress toward gender equality in Mexico. She is an inspiration to girls everywhere to be unafraid and undeterred to chase their wildest dreams.
