For Immediate Release
May 15, 2007
Contact: Melanie McDonald, director of media relations, 574-284-4579

Saint Mary's College Hires Multicultural Affairs Director

NOTRE DAME, Ind.--Saint Mary's College names Larisa Olin Ortiz as its Director of Multicultural Affairs. Ortiz previously served as assistant director. She leads the campus office established to advance the understanding of diversity at all levels by providing educational programs, services, support systems, networks and the review and implementation of policies and procedures on diversity initiatives.

Ortiz holds a B.A in International Relations from Tecnologico de Monterrey at Monterrey, Mexico. In 2003 she obtained a master's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of research included Latin American Politics and Online Media. While at Austin, she worked at the Knight Center for the Journalism in the Americas an organization created as a professional training and outreach program for journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her responsibilities included serving as a liaison for a distance learning program for journalists implemented both in Mexico and Peru, maintaining a trilingual website with resources for journalists in Latin America, and administrative support for annual conferences and events. She also worked as an investigative reporter for a Spanish local newspaper covering stories on immigration.

Before coming to Saint Mary's College in 2005, Larisa lived in Munich, Germany and obtained a German Proficiency Language Certificate from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. During her stay at Germany, she worked for the Hanns Seidel Stiftung at the Academy for Politics and Current Affairs. Larisa is a native of Monterrey, Mexico.

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