Diamond Casiano

Diamond is a current Senior interested in pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing. This summer, she spent a week in San Francisco CA participating in the Youth Leadership Summit. During the program, Diamond was able to overcome personal barriers. While attending, she had the opportunity to connect with Gear Up students all across the country!

Diamond mentioned "YLS was one of the most motivational conferences I ever attended. An unforgettable experience I had at the YLS conference was at the end of the conference we got a chance to give thanks to the people who impacted us while at that conference. Everyone got a chance to get vulnerable and let out their emotions to those people which I loved very much. Something I enjoyed was getting in groups and creating a powerful skit that we had to present in front of 1000 or more people. Even though I wasn’t part of the skit I still got a chance to work on the script with amazing people that I got pretty close to. I can’t forget about the time we all got a chance to break a wooden board. The wooden board represented something that’s holding us back and we broke it knowing we could overcome that struggle no matter what. If I had a chance to go to this conference again I would because I would be able to do things I wasn’t capable of until I left the YLS conference, that’s how much this conference impacted me. "

-Diamond