“My life is a miracle,” says Astrid Tuminez. “There is no other way to describe it.”
She admits that her two ambitions in college were to become the Secretary General of the United Nations and to have a limitless supply of Coca Cola. Though things did not exactly turn out the way she envisioned them, her story is one of incredible achievement despite overwhelming odds.
From her humble beginnings as the child of poor farmers from the Philippines to the seventh president of Utah Valley University, many remarkable things have happened in Astrid’s life. She was born as the sixth child of poor farmers in a village in the middle of nowhere by a half-blind midwife who had to cut the umbilical cord with a bit of bamboo.
Wish Upon a Star
When she was young, she used to look up through the holes in the thatched roof of the hut where her family lived and gaze at the stars, dreaming of a better future. Astrid and her sisters got their first big opportunity to better themselves when they were taken in by nuns from the Daughters of Charity. They brought them to a school that had a pilot program to help educate underprivileged children. Though it was the most expensive school in the city, this program allowed her and her sisters to attend for free.
She was so behind academically she found herself at the back of the class where students were ranked by intelligence. She was bewildered by numbers and letters when she first arrived at school and had to sound out each word. Appropriately, the first word she managed to learn was “sisters”, because she had five of her own. It was also hard to fit in while attending a school where most of the other students came from homes with maids and chauffeurs, while she came to school wearing cheap, plastic shoes and her only pair of socks.
But she determined not to stay in the back and through hard work, she progressed to the top of the class. Because she did not have money for lunch, she would escape to the library during lunchtime and immerse herself in books instead.
Divinity and Education
Her faith also sustained her during her hard times. “The nuns taught me from a young age to think about right and wrong and to look at people and ask what is divine in them.”
During her younger years, she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This led her to hear about Brigham Young University. She started her college education with a scholarship to study at one of the Philippines’ top universities, and then later transferred to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. With only a suitcase and a box of old books in hand, she ended up securing a full-ride scholarship through her merits. She graduated in just three years with a degree in Russian and international relations. She continued her education with a scholarship to Harvard University, where she met and married her husband, Jefferey Tolk. Later, she received a PhD in Political Science from MIT.
This launched a varied career. She worked for companies like the Carnegie Corporation, Microsoft, and finally, as the president of Utah Valley University. “Even though university president was not what I was thinking of, arriving at UVU, applying for the job, getting it, led me to a place where everything I had learned from my life experience, my academic experience, and my professional experience could all be put to work in one place.”
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