Miamian chosen as the first Hispanic president of Harvard Crimson in its 148-year history
A Colombian native who moved from Bogotá to Miami at age 12 and later graduated from Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove was just elected as The Harvard Crimson’s first Latina president in the student newspaper’s 148-year history.
Raquel Coronell Uribe, the daughter of two prominent Colombian journalists — former Univision News president Daniel Coronell and Noticias Uno TV news anchor María Cristina Uribe, shattered the glass ceiling last week, when the student publication announced the milestone.
“It’s very surreal,” Coronell Uribe, 23, told the Herald. “I’m feeling honored and excited and happy and overwhelmed. I think it’s still sinking in.”
A group of outgoing Crimson top staffers voted her in as the newest executive leader after participating in dozens of interviews during a five-week selection process, she said.
Coronell Uribe, a junior studying history and literature at Harvard University, will oversee a staff of about 300 employees and will occupy the role for a year, starting Jan. 1, 2022. She covers the police accountability beat and doubles as the social media manager.
Founded in 1873, the Crimson is the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper. It’s editorially and financially independent from the university.
The list of previous Crimson presidents features many prominent white men, including the late former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but few minority journalists — and until recently, no Hispanics.
In recent years, the Harvard newspaper has tried to include more students of color. In 2018, the Crimson elected its first Black woman president, Kristine Guillaume.
For Coronell Uribe, being the first Hispanic representative feels like “a huge responsibility.”
“I hope it will open the door for future Latinas to come,” she said.
Journalism, resilience run in the family
Coronell Uribe first moved to the U.S. in 2005, after her father received death threats, including an instance when someone sent a funeral wreath to his home, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported. As an investigative journalist, Coronell had uncovered government corruption, which partly implicated some of then-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s family members.
The family moved to California for about two years, then moved back to South America after “things calmed down a little bit,” Coronell Uribe said. But after a few years of still feeling unsafe, the Coronell Uribes moved to South Florida in 2011, when Coronell started working for Univision.
Coronell Uribe grew up in Coral Gables. At 16, she was diagnosed with leukemia and received treatment at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. That battle, combined with her grandfather being a doctor, led her to enroll as a pre-medical student at Harvard.
But after joining the Crimson her sophomore year as a comper, or contributor, she re-examined her decision.
“I realized even though I still wanted to help people, I was much more passionate about writing and other things, than necessarily heart science, so I changed paths,” she said.
Although unsure if she’ll stick with reporting for the long run, or switch to law eventually, she’s thankful for everyone who helped get her to where she’s now.
It’s that gratitude that Penny Townsend, the head of school at Ransom Everglades, said she remembers well about Coronell Uribe. Townsend saw her fight the aggressive cancer.
“She tried really hard to be in school that whole year and she ended up not being able to, so she had to repeat her junior year,” Townsend said. “But she never complained. She always had something to say about how much she appreciated everything.”
Townsend recalls how Coronell Uribe founded her Bald Is Beautiful Project, which enabled her to raise money to donate bald American Girl dolls to other young cancer patients in Florida and Colombia.
“She will leave the world better than she found it,” Townsend said. “She already has.”
Others have also recognized the achievement, including Daniella Levine Cava, the first female mayor of Miami-Dade County, who congratulated her on Twitter.
“It’s always a delight to watch our young residents do big things,” she wrote. “Miami-Dade is rooting for your success!”
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 2:28 PM.
