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Angela Castro ’02 shines as a light of hope for others.  

Since graduating from 51���� with a business degree in 2002, Angela Castro has enjoyed a progressively successful career. Recently appointed to the chief of staff role at Acadia Healthcare, it’s fair to say Angela has achieved her goal of securing financial security and upward social mobility for her family. 

For some, that may be enough. But Angela continues to strive toward greatness for the sake of others. She lives her life with an intense, purpose-driven determination to help people in need — both by vocation and by example. 

“My biggest purpose, my goal, is to let other girls know that they can do it — no matter what their circumstance,” says Angela. “I didn’t take the normal route. I had kids early and had some detours with some poor decisions. And I was able to do it. So that tells anyone they can do it.” 

Angela didn’t take a straight road to the C-suite. Growing up in a low-income project housing development, she was surrounded by violence: “I couldn’t even give you a number of how many of my friends were shot and killed growing up right in front of me.”  

As a promising high-school athlete, Angela was courted by many colleges but lacked the support to navigate the application system. “We were project kids,” says Angela. “They didn’t help us in that way. I think they didn’t even look at us as having an opportunity for college.”  

Yet Angela always knew she wanted a way out, she wanted to make something of herself.  

At 25, when she suddenly found herself a single mother of two young children, Angela knew what she had to do: pursue her education so that she could give her children a better future. She made the difficult decision to move the three of them into a shared bedroom at her mother’s house.  

“It was not the best neighborhood,” Angela recalls. “This was the crack epidemic; it was so drug-infested. There was so much negative influence; so many families were being disrupted.”  

She began taking courses at LCCC in the hopes of becoming a nurse but soon discovered that, although she wanted to help people, nursing wasn’t the right fit for her. She transferred to a local business school then decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business. After visiting several area schools, the School of Adult and Graduate Education (SAGE) program at Cedar Crest quickly became her top choice.  

It was the woman-centric atmosphere — the unique combination of power and support 
 — that really drew her in.  

“It felt like there was so much power on campus … so much to offer, especially for a woman,” says Angela. “I felt nurtured. I was going back to school as a single mom at that point, working full-time and going to school practically full-time, and I felt like the campus was just so warm and nurturing.”  

Angela was able to transfer her business school credits, and the flexibility of the program allowed her to take night, weekend, online, and even day courses while still working her full-time job. She was soon able to get her own apartment. Yet even with the supportive atmosphere, her school years were hardly easy. “When I look back, I think that’s why people asked me, ‘how do you do it?’” recalls Angela.  

For years, Angela started each day with an early morning walk to drop her kids at school, hopped on a bus to Cedar Crest for classes, then took another bus to her middle shift job at Sacred Heart Hospital. While she worked, her kids went to after-school programs and her mother’s apartment until she picked them up at 11 p.m. They’d walk the five or six blocks back home, go to bed, and do it all over again the next day. So how did she do it? “You just do it,” she says, “I had to do it.”  

Angela credits her time at Cedar Crest — the healthy classroom interactions and intellectual debates with the other students from different backgrounds — with helping her find her voice and transforming her understanding of the world, and her place in it.   

“Cedar Crest allowed me to give people grace in areas where I wouldn’t have,” says Angela. “The biggest thing it taught me — and I’m probably going to get emotional, but I didn’t think about this before — is meeting people where they’re at. I had to learn that there, because it was such a different world for me, that I learned that I could have grace in areas where I didn’t think I could.  

“I was so defensive, where I came from, so reactionary, and [Cedar Crest] taught me that people can have a different opinion than me, a different upbringing,” reveals Angela. 

It’s that understanding of others, combined with a healthy dose of grit and determination that’s allowed Angela to thrive in her career, and to make such a positive difference in so many lives, both as a behavioral health care professional and as a role model for young women.  

“There’s a lot of hopelessness in the community that I was brought up in, and I wanted to be that light for people, you know, that person that shows that there’s hope — no matter what your circumstances are today,” concludes Angela.