Sophia Chiodo transferred to UMass Amherst excited to study marketing at the Isenberg School of Management. Fresh out of Mount Wachusett Community College with an associate’s degree in business administration, she felt prepared to tackle classes, deadlines, and grades.
But as Sophia quickly learned, much of her success would be determined by mastering a hidden curriculum: unspoken institutional norms, skills, and markers of readiness that shape who moves forward in traditional schools and workplaces.
Networking. Internships. Professional polish. Many of Sophia’s peers had been introduced to these things early on, having grown up watching family members navigate elite education and careers. Sophia—a first-generation college student—had not.
“I felt like I was expected to have already figured these things out,” she reflects. “It made me feel like an imposter.”
Sophia had landed on the wrong side of an unfair disparity—one that the Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS) works to address through programs like Negotiation for Career Success.
Through the program, Sophia gained the skills and confidence she needed to navigate the hidden curriculum—and pass that knowledge on to others through her own work and advocacy.
New Campus, New Challenges
Sophia is the first in her family to attend college, but she’s the latest in a lineage of successful women. She credits her grandmother—who came to the United States from Italy as a young girl—and mother for getting her where she is.
“My grandmother worked hard to build a better life for our family and created a foundation that my mother continued to build upon,” she says proudly. “Because of their strength, I have the opportunity to attend college today.”
Now, it was Sophia’s turn to inherit that foundation—and like her foremothers, she had to find her footing with each new milestone. She describes her experience at community college as narrowly focused: get through school, get good grades, and keep moving.
“There wasn’t encouragement to, for example, set up a LinkedIn profile, build a résumé, or look for internships,” Sophia says.
But when she transferred to UMass Amherst, it seemed like students were expected to already know these things if they wanted to get ahead. She really struggled.
“I felt like the students around me had already done all of these things, and I just didn’t know how,” Sophia recalls. “I was being held back by things that no one had ever explained to me.”
A Lightbulb Moment
But Sophia quickly remembered where she came from. Her family may not have taught her the hidden curriculum of higher education, but they raised her to have dignity, work hard, and stand up for her needs.
“I couldn’t let the embarrassment or imposter syndrome get the best of me,” she remembers thinking. “And I knew I couldn’t be the only student going through this. There had to be others out there who could help.”
Sophia followed those instincts to the Office of Access, Collaboration, and Engagement for Success (ACES) at Isenberg, where she met students and staff who had come from similar backgrounds. She got a job there as a social media assistant, where she helps promote events, opportunities, and resources that support students on campus. ACES provided a community—and a growing understanding of the barriers that can exist for students like her.
“Rather than just notice the gaps,” Sophia asked herself, “how can I help fill them so that other students don’t have to face those challenges alone?”
These questions led her to a book talk by IDS Director Buju Dasgupta—and to a copy of her book Change the Wallpaper.
“It was like a lightbulb moment,” Sophia says. “Dr. Buju’s book helped me see that many of the challenges I felt as a first-generation student weren’t personal failures, but structural patterns within systems that reward unspoken forms of knowledge, confidence, and access that are distributed unevenly from the start.”
Buju encouraged Sophia to take a new course called Negotiation for Career Success.
Learning How to Navigate
Negotiation for Career Success begins from a simple premise: if the hidden curriculum is shaping who gets ahead, a university committed to social justice should be explicitly teaching it to students. It helps students learn the social and professional skills critical to their success in college and career.
The development and thinking behind the program is an intriguing story—the result of years of crisis-response, research, and experimentation by IDS and its partners. But for Sophia, the impact was immediate.
If Change the Wallpaper helped her see the system, Negotiation for Career Success helped her navigate through it. Through roleplay, guided exercises, and conversations with mentors and professionals, she learned to recognize why, when, and how to self-advocate in professional settings. She learned about her own communication habits—including the ways she sometimes undermined her own position. She could practice different negotiation styles in the classroom before she needed them in job interviews and meetings.
“Now when I go into the real world and face someone who’s a tough negotiator, I can go in with confidence having played these things out before,” Sophia says. “I built practical skills that will be invaluable as I pursue work in marketing, client relations, and leadership roles in the future.”
But the course gave her something even more invaluable: a sense that she belongs in the room.
“I believe this class really made a lasting difference in my experience at UMass,” she reflects. “I feel much more confident moving forward in my career, knowing that I have this amazing experience to lean back on.”
Turning Insight into Action
Sophia did not wait long to put that growth into practice—or in service to others.
At ACES, Sophia helps manage the UMass Professional Wardrobe Closet. The closet helps students prepare for interviews, career fairs, and other professional opportunities by providing free professional clothing they can keep.
Sophia was involved while the initiative was still taking shape, helping with both marketing and operations as it grew. And she kept asking the same question that had shaped her time at UMass: where were the gaps, and how could she help fill them?
When she realized that the closet didn’t offer things like self-care products and cosmetics, she reached out to close friend Samantha Asprelli, whose nonprofit Give n’ Glow distributes these to community organizations. Together, they built a partnership that brought more than 350 products to the closet for students.
“Initiatives like this are about making an impact wherever I can,” Sophia says. “I understand what it’s like to walk into a room and feel unprepared or unsure.”
She’s also been thinking about the students who will come after her. With community college now free in Massachusetts, Sophia knows more transfer students will be making the same transition she did. She has been advocating for stronger systems to support them: a guidebook, peer mentor structure, or clearer pathways for students who may be arriving with drive and determination, but without the same inherited professional knowledge as many of their peers.
“If they’re feeling the way I felt,” she says, “I want there to be more supports in place.”
Above all, she wants them to know that the difficulties they might encounter aren’t a sign of personal deficiency, but a system they can learn to name, navigate, and push against.
Sophia moves through professional spaces with a sense of confidence, skill, and possibility now—and looks for opportunities to make those spaces more equitable for others. Through her work and advocacy, she builds her career and uplifts the people around her. And with every milestone, she adds her own contribution to the foundation built—step by hard-earned step—by her grandmother and mother.