On a recent Friday afternoon, the area between Dialynas and Sontag Halls transformed into a fair of sorts, showcasing resources from across Pomona’s campus. The event, “Professionalism and Pastries,” was conceived of and organized by resident advisors of five North Campus residence halls in partnership with the Career Development Office.
“The event was centered around professionalism, and we wanted to introduce people to campus resources while helping them prep for their job search,” says Bailey Williams ’26, one of the resident advisors (RAs) who organized the affair.
For the event, each RA drew on their connections to invite campus departments and offices to participate, including the Dean of Students Office, Queer Resource Center and Sustainability Office. The gathering focused on career preparation, with student photographers on hand to take headshots.
“Utilizing your network and sharing the resources you know is so good because there’s plenty of resources here on campus that people are not aware of,” says Zeean Firmeza ’26, another RA who organized the event.
Firmeza, a public policy analysis major with a politics concentration, says the RA role has grown her collaboration skills, and Professionalism and Pastries was a prime example of how to put those skills into action.
Firmeza credits her experience as an RA with helping her excel at her summer internship at a higher ed consulting firm, where she received an offer to return after graduation.
“RAs have a bird’s-eye view of campus life,” says Residence Life Coordinator Kimani Francois. As a residential college, Pomona relies on RAs to play an important role in overseeing and shaping residential life, she says.
“The RAs care about their residents and the residential experience,” says Francois, “and prepare and work hard to make sure students have a great experience at Pomona.”
We spoke to a few other RAs about why they took on the role and how their RA experience has helped them grow.
Harrison Brown ’26
An economics major from Montclair, New Jersey, Brown has served as an RA since his sophomore year. His inspiration for applying was his first-year RA.
“My RA was the coolest person I’ve ever met,” says Brown. “He was so good at interacting with people in the hall and always so accessible.”
He recalls a “doodle board” his RA hung up in the hallway, along with a marker for residents to add their own drawings.
“We would all convene around the doodle board, and he would even hang out at the board with us,” says Brown.
As an RA, Brown discovered that he enjoyed the event-planning aspect of the role. Organizing events has grown his networking and advertising skills, he says, and he believes those abilities contributed to him receiving a return job offer after his summer internship at Bloomberg.
Brown points to Francois as someone who helped him develop professionally.
“She’s helped me grow me so much,” he says. “She’s always told me, ‘Promise as much as you think you can do, but then overdeliver.’”
Semi Osunkeye ’28
A psychological science major, Osunkeye was drawn to the community-building aspect of the RA role.
Each semester RAs are required to host two “active” events, such as “Cane’s and Karaoke,” and two “passive” events, which can look like creating a community playlist or grab-and-go waffles and hot chocolate. Osunkeye says the job has required her “to be creative in bringing the community together.”
A Posse Scholar from Chicago, Osunkeye says her RA last year “was always available for conversations and very much a resource” for her.
“I wanted to be that,” she says.
Somya Singh ’28
Singh, an economics major from San Francisco, says she wanted to take on the RA role because she “had seen how much of an impact an RA has on a student’s life.”
As an RA, you have to be a voice for your residents.
Singh’s first-year RA was “very supportive,” she says, which inspired her to approach the role “like a student that is your friend who genuinely cares about you and wants you to be happy, thrive and live in a community where you feel safe.”
Planning events has been one of her favorite parts of being an RA. She especially enjoyed seeing students come together for a “performative male” competition in the fall and “Dogs on the Quad,” a perennial crowd-pleaser.
Being an RA has boosted Singh’s confidence.
“As an RA, you have to be a voice for your residents,” she says. “But in that process, I’ve also learned to advocate for myself, and I’ve carried that into a lot of other parts of my life.”