Educated Here, Employed Here, Gives Here: Juan Avilés ’21 ’23MA
Two-time Knight took a leap of faith going back to school after already having a successful career and has kept looking forward.
Juan Avilés ’21 ’23MA still remembers the feeling of opening his UCF acceptance letter.
“It rocked my world,” he says. “The school thought I was good enough.”
It wasn’t simply relief. The letter validated something he had doubted for years: that he belonged in college.
Long before he became a UCF employee, earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the UCF Nicholson School of Communication and Media and began helping hundreds of new employees find their footing at the university, Avilés was a first-generation college student who walked away from school convinced he wasn’t capable of succeeding.
“I did not do well at all,” he says of his first experience in college. “There was a lot of shame in not knowing.”
Embarrassed to admit he was struggling, he stopped raising his hand. Instead of asking for help, he convinced himself everyone else understood something he didn’t.
Life, however, had other plans.
After moving to Chicago, he discovered something surprising: he loved learning. He taught himself Portuguese while working for an international company, became known for helping others master new technology and built a successful career that included Walt Disney World, where he served as a Disney Ambassador.
Later, Avilés trained physicians and healthcare teams on electronic medical records. Promotion after promotion followed. Despite that professional success, however, something lingered.
“Before I knew the term imposter syndrome,” he says, “I really dealt with that a lot.”
Despite professional success, he couldn’t shake the feeling that one unfinished chapter continued to define him. Then, in 2018, he decided it was finally time to rewrite it.
He enrolled at Valencia College through DirectConnect to UCF with a very different mindset than the one he’d carried as an 18-year-old. This time, he sat in the front row, introduced himself to every professor, asked questions and sought guidance from academic advisors.
“I was running on motivation and fear of failure,” he says with a laugh.
It worked. For the first time, Avilés realized he hadn’t lacked intelligence. He had simply lacked a roadmap.
That realization crystallized in a required student success seminar that taught incoming students how to study, build schedules, find resources and navigate college life.
“I was like, ‘Where was this? I needed this,'” he recalls.
For years, he had assumed he simply wasn’t cut out for college.
Instead, he realized no one had ever taught him how to be a college student.
More importantly, the course showed him that he didn’t have to find his way alone.
“These people are serious about getting me across the finish line,” he remembers thinking.
His classmates surprised him, too. Rather than viewing him as an older student, they welcomed him into study groups, shared advice and encouraged one another’s ambitions.
“They let me into their village,” he says. “They treated me as an equal.”
When the acceptance letter arrived from UCF, he didn’t see an admissions decision. He saw permission to believe in himself again.
“I walked onto this campus and my chest was out,” he says. “The shame got replaced with pride.”
He completed his bachelor’s degree in communication a year early, served as an undergraduate teaching assistant and immediately continued into graduate school. There, he researched how communication helps experienced employees navigate technological change in the workplace.
Only a few months after he earned his master’s degree, an opportunity arose to put that research and his years of professional experience to work at UCF. Today, the student who once believed he didn’t belong helps ensure others never feel that way.
As a training specialist in Advancement & Partnerships, Avilés has helped onboard more than 100 new employees while designing professional development experiences that strengthen collaboration across the division. From DiSC workshops, interview training and onboarding innovations, he draws on what he has learned as both a student and educator to help colleagues recognize their strengths and succeed.
For Avilés, every new employee represents another opportunity to build the kind of supportive environment that transformed his own life.
“I’m really excited that UCF has let me use the degree that I earned in a way that benefits our mission,” he says.
That mission is also why he gives back. He has contributed to the Knights Pantry, ¡Vamos Knights!, Police K-9, First Generation Scholarships and many others.
Every gift represents an investment in students who may be questioning whether they belong, just as he once did. His experience taught him that success isn’t determined by how someone begins, but by what becomes possible when that person receives the guidance, encouragement and opportunity to continue.
“The kid who was 18,” he says, “didn’t really understand what it meant to be a student.”
The man who returned decades later discovered something much more important. He had been capable all along.
Years ago, one letter convinced Juan Avilés that he belonged at UCF.
Today, through every employee he welcomes and every student he supports, he helps someone else believe the same thing.
Juan Avilés’s story reflects the spirit of Go For Launch, UCF’s most ambitious campaign yet, and the belief that Knights can help shape what comes next. Join UCF’s next mission and help build a future the world has only begun to imagine at ucf.edu/go-for-launch.
