Three Times a Winner – PCC student Alina Alejo talks scholarships and new business venture

It was around this time last year that PCC business major Alina Alejo learned she had been awarded the Robert Westerbeck Scholarship for a second time.

Nearly a year later, she’s received the award yet again—three times since she first enrolled at PCC in 2018.

“I feel so honored,” she says of the accolade. “It’s really nice to see that my academic and personal pursuits have paid off.”

Alina, who plans to transfer to USC’s Marshall School of Business in Fall 2022, launched her own small business, highpriestess.art, last year.

“I make homemade candles,” she says. “They’re all hand-poured, coconut and soy wax based. I get really creative with the scents. It’s everything from Fruit Loops breakfast cereal scented candles to lavender and amethyst scented.”

Reflecting on her award, Alina says she is particularly grateful for the guidance she found in PCC’s Puente Project, EOP&S, and PASS programs.

“These programs have helped me out so much along my academic journey,” she says. “I’m a woman and a person of color, and I’m going into the field of business. To be uplifted by this community and encouraged, to have a counselor who knows me personally, to have access to resources that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise—it’s been the key to so much of my success.”

“I’m also really grateful for the PCC Foundation,” she adds. “Scholarships can make the difference between someone who stays in school and someone who doesn’t, and I never want to take it for granted that I’ve received these awards.”

As Alina says, PCC has been life changing.

“I have so much gratitude for PCC,” she says. “It’s changed my life in the best possible way. I am so thankful for the opportunities I found there and the people I’ve met along the way. It just reinforces that I’m on the right path.”

Be sure to check out Alina’s homemade candles on her official website, http://highpriestessart.square.site/, and don’t forget to follow her on Instagram! https://instagram.com/highpriestess.art?r=nametag