Xiana Gutierrez ’16: The Original ‘Doll’

Name: Xiana Gutierrez

Hometown: Belleville, NJ

Major: Honors Nursing

Year: Junior

Involvement: The B.A.B.Y. Dolls, Information Technology

Fun Fact: My favorite food is peanut butter and jelly.

Favorite Quote: “Do not let your circumstances define you.”

 

 

Xiana is an honorable member of the WPUNJ community who makes a lasting impression on everyone she meets because of her bubbly personality, enthusiasm, and work ethic. She quickly became involved on campus as a freshman and made connections with many people. This enabled her to create the newly successful organization, the B.A.B.Y. Dolls with a few other students who were just as passionate and motivated. Xiana is worthy of this celebrity status because she is a loyal WPUNJ student who has truly made a positive difference in many students’ experiences and enhanced the WPUNJ community’s involvement and charitable activities.

 

HC: What has been your greatest achievement here at WPUNJ?

 

XG: The B.A.B.Y. Dolls stands for Brilliant and Beautiful Youth. Our main mission has been to help students on our campus realize how rewarding community service can be and how easy it is to make a difference in the lives of those in need.

 

XG: When I first thought about starting a club on campus, I wanted to start a peanut butter and jelly club (don’t laugh, haha). I saw the club at another campus and thought that it was a great way to share my love for helping people and my love for peanut butter and jelly. After sharing my idea with a few of my fellow classmates, one colleague in particular expressed her interest in starting a “glamour girls” club on campus, in which we would visit senior citizen homes and help beautify them. Putting our ideas together, we decided to make a general community service club. We needed a name and we needed it fast. We thought of so many different names, but after my former co-president said the Baby Dolls, I knew that was the name we’d stick with. We thought of an acronym and then we got to work!

 

XG: The B.A.B.Y. Dolls has influenced me in so many more ways than I really learned what it meant to be a leader. My main goal was to help students of the WPUNJ campus become more exposed to helping the community, but in starting the club and holding events on campus, I gained so much more than that. After a year of working on building The B.A.B.Y. Dolls, my goal has changed slightly in that I want to build leaders within my organization and not just lead.

 

XG: For this semester, one major goal is for us to make our meetings more interactive and more like on-campus service events. We’re having trips to the Community Food Bank of NJ every month, and we’re in the process of planning a trip to the Making Strides Breast Cancer Walk in Central Park as well as our 1st annual charity gala. This Friday (9/19) we will be having out first service event, in which we’ll be packaging peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to donate to local food pantries in Paterson, NJ.

 

XG: The easiest way to join the B.A.B.Y. Dolls would be to join us on pioneer life, follow us on social media, and come out to our meetings. That way you can be in the loop for all of our events. 

 

XG: The diversity. It’s the reason I chose WPUNJ in the first place. I grew up around diversity, and I wanted to make sure I maintained that exposure for the rest of my life.

 

XG: In the next year I hope to continue growing the B.A.B.Y. Dolls as an organization and building more and more student leaders within the campus. 

 

XG: I would tell myself to slow down and enjoy every opportunity I possibly can. 

 

XG: My advice to freshmen at WPUNJ would be to immerse themselves in everything they enjoy. College is more than education; it’s an experience.