Jindal School Student Earns Campus and Professional Recognition

Jessica Munoz wasted no time once she arrived at The University of Texas at Dallas. She joined up, got to work, studied hard and impressed more than a few professionals with her acumen and energy. This spring, she reaped what she has sown, earning both the campus-wide Student Diversity Award and the DFW American Marketing Association Collegiate Marketer of the Year award.

“Jessica has been an active leader on campus,” says Raul Hinojosa, director of community engagement in the UT Dallas Office of Diversity and Community Engagement. “She is an admired leader across campus. She pushes herself to be part of a diverse set of organizations and to take a genuine interest in people who are different from her.”

Munoz is the fifth Jindal School student to earn the Collegiate Marketer of the Year Award. Since Joshua Joseph, BS 2012, picked up the inaugural honor in 2012, JSOM marketing students have earned all but one of the competitive CMOY awards (see Jindal School CMOY Winners below).

Munoz, who will graduate in 2018 with a BS in Marketing degree from the Naveen Jindal School of Management, also earned admiration from Dr. Julie Haworth, the degree’s program director. “Her unique skills include her drive and professionalism, as well as her patience and warm personality,” Haworth says.

“I never imagined I would be able to attend college, so to be receiving these two awards is an extreme honor to me; and they motivate me to continue to work hard to accomplish my dreams,” Munoz says. “I want to help give hope to other students who may not believe that scholarships or getting recognitions in their field is possible for them.”

In addition to her role as the vice president for programming of the campus AMA chapter, Munoz is involved in the Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority on campus, where she serves as alumni relations chair. “As the largest Latina-founded, multicultural membership sorority in the nation, we strive to empower women of all backgrounds by honoring our five principles of academics, community service, cultural awareness, social interaction, and morals and ethics,” Munoz says.

“I have admired her drive to learn more about people from other cultures,” Hinojosa says. “She and her sorority sisters have played a big role in helping create a thriving and active Latino community of students at UT Dallas.”

Munoz interns with the Association of Persons Affected by Addiction, a Dallas addiction recovery program. She manages its website and is assisting with the upcoming jazz benefit concert. Down the road, she plans to use her marketing degree to help those starting their own businesses. “In five years, I would like to be a manager for a small business so that I can have experience in what it feels like to run my own business and get operational and administrative experience,” she says. “In 15 years, I would like to have my own marketing business that targets small businesses and startups begun by minority business owners and women. I want to help them market not only their products and services but also themselves.”

For now, Munoz remains focused on being the best at UT Dallas that she can be, in a place where she feels at home, acknowledging support she has received from professors, especially Haworth and Keith Dickinson, a marketing adjunct lecturer.

“I can’t express in words how much UT Dallas has contributed to this success,” Munoz says. “I have received a tremendous amount of mentoring. … The classes are designed to prepare you to apply the concepts in a real-world setting, which is what I am doing now in my internship, and I continue to attend all the networking events to stay updated in my field. I feel like a part of this community.”