Breanna Orozco is about to start graduate school at the University of Southern California, and she’s already winning awards.

Orozco (Kinesiology, 2015) received a USC Latino Alumni Association Graduate Scholarship to help with tuition.

She is pursuing a master’s degree in biokinesiology with a focus on exercise oncology research at the university’s Women’s Health and Exercise Lab. She is interested in studying the physiological benefits of exercise to improve survival rates among those with breast cancer, especially Latina breast cancer survivors.

While at CSU Monterey Bay, Orozco was a McNair Scholar, a member of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program and winner of the 2015 Alumni Vision Award. She made presentations at numerous conferences and had three peer-reviewed journal articles published on her workplace health promotion research. In 2014, she was one of only two students in the country who were awarded the ACSM Lawrence Golding Health and Fitness Scholarship. She spent winter breaks and summers working in the women’s health lab at USC through CSUMB’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center.

Her goals are to become a research professor, to serve Latino communities and to act as a mentor to aspiring Latino researchers.