Justine Alexis Figueroa, or Tina, as close friends and family know her, is a junior at USF, where she is a mass communications major (with a focus in magazine production) and a creative writing minor. Justine is 20 years old and was born in Chicago, Illinois, and her hometown is Kissimmee, Florida, but during the school year she calls Tampa, Florida, home. When it came time for Justine to decide on colleges, her interest to work in the magazine world also piqued. Justine happily discovered that USF had a magazine specific program, unlike other schools, and it immediately became her top choice school. What eventually made her decision to attend USF was her visit to the campus where she immediately felt a great vibe and energy and felt like she could call the school her new home.
Aside from school, Justine has many interests and passions. One of her interests is beauty and makeup, and if she weren’t already pursuing a degree at USF she most likely would have decided to become a makeup artist. Justine also enjoys writing because she feels it is how she expresses herself best. Being a writer, Justine enjoys reading books, listing her favorites as Looking for Alaska by John Green and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. She also enjoys an eclectic taste in music, such as Bon Iver, Muse, Adele, Frank Ocean, Florence + the Machine and Regina Spektor, just to name a few. She is also an avid TV and movie watcher (some of her favorites being True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf and any movie starring Ryan Gosling). Something else Justine is very passionate about is equality and helping in the fight to abolish sex trafficking worldwide, which continues to be a big issue around the world and even in the US.
Justine not only has a big heart, but she has big dreams and she hopes to one day attend graduate school to get a masters degree in journalism, media studies or creative writing. Justine’s ultimate goal though is to one day become the creative director for a magazine (like Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar). Along the way she has many other big aspirations, like writing a novel, working in publications and to eventually have a family, but she isn’t in a rush for that to happen right away since she has big plans to travel and become independent and self sufficient first.