Almonte’s journey from Union to Harvard

Now that graduation has come and gone, many Sampson County grads are getting prepped for college. For one former Union student, Daisy Almonte, her journey just wrapped up and it ended with a degree from Harvard University.

“It feels like a dream come true,” Almonte said about graduating Harvard. “Especially because I had said to myself and to people around me that I wanted to be a lawyer. Since a really young age, I remember going into the counselors meetings at Union High School, when we would pick our classes for the next year. We would fill out a little worksheet where we would say what careers you were interested in and things like that.”

“I remember, writing down, attorney, lawyer, and so it feels surreal to think I actually got my law degree,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m studying for the bar right now that’s coming up in July and it still feels like a story. It’s not and now I’m actually fulfilling my childhood dreams and I feel really blessed to be able to say that.”

Almonte became a Spartan graduate in 2016 where she went on to earn the Benjamin N. Duke Scholarship. An award which covered full tuition, room, board and fees for eight semesters at Duke University. It honored excelling students from North and South Carolina for their academics, community engagement and aspirations to become leaders.

Following that achievement she spent a four-year stint at Duke where she not only got her Bachelors in 2020 she also became a Harry S. Truman Scholar. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship being the premier graduate fellowship in the United States for public service leadership. A federally funded merit scholarship, it’s granted to U.S. undergraduate students for demonstrated leadership potential, academic excellence and a commitment to public service.

From there, it took Almonte another three years and then here in 2023 she’d add Harvard Law School graduate to her resume.

A resume that includes many other honors and awards such as the, Linda K. George Award for Excellence in the Scholarship of Health and Society from Duke University Department of Sociology. The Winfred Quinton Holton Prize for Innovative Work in the Field of Education Honorable Mention from Duke University Department of Education, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alice M. Baldwin Scholar also from Duke University; a Gates Millennium Scholar for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Golden LEAF Scholar for the Golden LEAF Foundation and a North Carolina Hispanic College Fund Scholar for the North Carolina Hispanic College Fund.

Now with only the bar exam standings in front of her dream of becoming a lawyer, once passes, she hopes to pursue a career in commercial litigation.

“We’ll right now, like I said, I’m studying for the bar exam and after the bar exam, I’ll be doing commercial litigation and looking to see how I can continue being involved in the pro bono space.”

Almonte is a first generation college graduate and the daughter of immigrant parents who came from Mexico. Growing up in that experience helped shaped her desire to help those that are less fortunate and those going through what she did.

Wanting to aid as many people as possible in similar situations being a key driving force for her pursuit into law.

“Because of what I saw, or what I wanted to do, was be able to have the opportunity to do both hands on work, or direct services work, but also macro level,” she said. “I think with the skills that you gain as a lawyer, you’re equipped to do both. So you can take on both direct representation cases where you’re affirmatively representing someone in their immigration or in their like discrimination case, but you can also take on more macro level roles where you’re helping to advise on policy or where you’re helping to do an impact litigation to where you’re suing on behalf of a class of people that are facing some sort of like legal issues.”

“So I felt that I had the most flexibility to be able to do that one-on-one support, but also take a step back and work on a little bit more macro level issues,” Almonte added. “That’s kind of what appealed to me about pursuing the JD lawyer route, as opposed to trying to look into a public office or anything else.”

On the surface it may seem like Almonte traveled a simple road of working hard in her studies where her efforts were rewarded. That wasn’t the case and she’d share stories of the struggles she went through that lead her to the path she’s now on.

“There’s a lot to unpack, but one of the first things I guess that comes to mind is,” she began. “As the daughter of immigrants who came to this country for a better life, not having mastery of the English language completely I struggled a lot with reading, and with speaking English in my first few years of elementary school. I’m 25 now but I remember, as I’m thinking back, when I was like, six or seven years old, I just remember being told by the people around me by classmates that I was dumb.”

“That was just simply because of not being able to read and express myself then,” she said. “The worst part was that because the people around me kept telling me that I was dumb I thought that it must be true.”

“I think that’s something that a lot of students from Samson County may be able to relate to,” Almonte said. “Not just in elementary school, but we have a lot of students making their way even through high school where it’s a little tougher if they’ve recently immigrated. To feel like school might not be the place for you or is a place where you’re told that not you’re not smart is something I also went through.”

To any students that might be in those varies situations Almonte left words of encouragement in her finally remarks. Wisdom she felt compelled to leave as someone who lived through it and is on the verge of achieving her dreams.

“I struggled a lot with reading, I struggled a lot with with speaking and now I’m about to enter a profession that is all about reading comprehension and all about speaking,” she said. “So to me, that’s a big kind of message to send to, not just just the children of immigrants, but just children in general who, who feel like reading is not for them, English is not their subject or even that maybe those subjects don’t matter or are not important.”

“Even to those that are just looking at others around them and thinking I don’t understand how college works or how to actually making going to college happen,” Almonte added. “Also to those thinking about financial reasons because their family is not making enough money to save up 1000s of dollars to be able to pay every year for college, that doesn’t mean it’s off the table.”

“My message to all of them that I would like to send is this,” she added. “Just because something is foreign to you, or it hasn’t been done in your family, or you might not see a lot of people that look like you doing it doesn’t mean that it’s unattainable.”