Veronica Opuni, ’25, who will graduate this month after a long life journey, is nothing if not determined.
Having started at Southern in 2018, Opuni switched majors, joined the military, got married, and moved out of state before eventually returning to Southern to complete her degree with flying colors, including being listed on the President’s Honor Roll with a 4.0 GPA.
It hasn’t been easy, because her family in Ghana, where Opuni was born, had insisted on her becoming a nurse. However, going her own way, she will graduate as a business major.
Opuni had immigrated to the United States as a child with her parents and two siblings; a third was born in this country.
“We came here when I was around 13 years old, and that was back in 2013, and so I did eighth grade here,” Opuni said. “And then after that, I did high school.” She did her freshman year of high school at Manchester High School in Manchester, Conn., and in her sophomore year she transferred to a magnet school, Sport and Medical Sciences Academy in downtown Hartford.
She started at Southern as a nursing student, “because that’s all my parents wanted me to do,” Opuni said. “I come from a family of nurses. Both of my parents are nurses here, and I have relatives also back home in Ghana who are all into nursing. So it’s like nursing runs in the family.”
As the oldest sibling, Opuni was expected to follow the nursing path.
“It’s so easy to obtain a job after school, so why not go into nursing?” she said. “But even before I graduated high school, I knew nursing wasn’t for me. Rather, I was more into business.”
She had taken a business class as a high school junior, and as part of the course had developed a business plan about importing African apparel.
“I remember my school brought people from outside, people who actually run businesses outside, to be the judges for the competition,” Opuni said. “It was a big deal.”
She went on a field trip to Babson College, where she met students from all over New England, “and I remember I was on this big podium, pitching my business idea.” The experience stayed with her. Business was where she wanted to find a career.
“I just enjoy customer service. And so that was when I knew business is what I actually was born to do.”
To break from her parents’ expectations, Opuni decided to join the military, which provides her tuition benefits, thus allowing her financial independence. “I wanted to go on a journey of self-discovery,” she said.
Opuni didn’t tell her parents because she knew they would try to talk her out of it. But “my mind was made up,” she said. “And once I made up my mind about something, there’s no going back.”
She’s now a member of the Army National Guard, based in Niantic, Conn. She also met her husband while on drills.
She returned to Southern in fall 2022 and completed two years in the business program and then got married. After being transferred to Georgia, she intended to complete her degree there but was dismayed to learn that changing universities would mean repeating 2-1/2 years of her degree requirements. It made sense for her to continue at Southern so she wouldn’t have to repeat any credits, so she and her husband made the difficult decision that they would live apart for a year while she finished her degree.
At Southern, she’s joined the Women in Leadership Academy and the African Students Association and she’s enjoyed studying retail. “I love customer service,” she said. “Just having that little conversation with people just excites me. It makes me happy.”
She’s found her professors to be supportive. “They’re more than my professors,” she said. “It’s like these people have your interests at heart. They’re always ever willing to support you, give you the resources that you need. … It has been like a family, and it’s been a support system for me.”
Staff members praise Opuni in return.
“What really stands out to me is just how determined she was and how courageous she was,” said Denise Bentley-Drobish, director of the Office of Student Involvement.
“She made the decision to step away from the path that she was on to join the military, showing her resilience, her determination, and it changed her as a person,” she said. “When she came back, she just was so much more prepared to do the work, so much more energized by her work as a business major.”
Britt Conroy, coordinator of Veteran, Military and Adult Learner Services, said Opuni will often stop in to her office “just to check in with me and say hello.”
“She is just so driven, and she’s such a wonderful person and she really just kind of lights up a room,” Conroy said. “She’s very kind and always smiling, even when she was having a hard time.”
Opuni has two connections with economics professor Samuel Kojo Andoh — her academic connections and the fact they both hail from Ghana.
“She was a very hard worker, always prepared and, of course, in the course of conversation with her … she was really attentive, very respectful,” he said.
“I talk to her as my daughter and encourage her to keep going whenever we meet in the campus,” Andoh said. “We stop and we chat, find out how she’s doing. … I would say that we have a little bit more connection than a professor-student here.”
