NHI’s Nicole Nieto and Sofia Goff featured on Austin TV for Hispanic Heritage Month

As part of its Hispanic Heritage Month coverage, Spectrum News Austin featured the National Hispanic Institute’s work via an interview, which aired Sunday, Sept. 18, with executive vice president Nicole Nieto and alumna (and current college student and volunteer) Sofia Goff.

The video is available to view on the Spectrum News Austin site (with the NHI portion starting at the 3:00 mark).

In it, Nieto talks about how NHI develops students who see serving their communities as integral to their life journeys.

“We engage with families, high schools, middle schools to identify young people who want to have a career, who want to go to college for sure, but who want to have an impact on society,” she said in the interview.

“And the point of NHI is to help them see themselves taking on important leadership roles in the future, and really working on their communication skills, their governance skills, their use of inquiry, to be able to actually make an impact on society.”

Goff noted, in response to a question about how NHI has inspired her, “NHI runs on a model which the leaders, after going through the program, are students themselves. So NHI has been incredibly inspiring by providing me with role models, just a couple steps ahead of me as college students, as well as older high school students, so that was incredibly impactful as a student.”

Goff, currently attending Southern Methodist University and studying economics and public policy, remarked in the segment that she someday hopes to work for the State Department developing economic policy.

Asked about what she’d tell other students signing up for NHI experiences, Goff said, “I would encourage them to really get to know their peers and learn from other Latino experiences. Because every community has a different flavor and different experiences. And so, as you gather at these programs, you really get to learn about these different perspectives and that’s something you can take back to your community … which helped me here on my university campus as I get to know other Latinos.”

Nieto also reminded viewers that sign-ups are already underway for some 2023 programs.