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When Ricky Duraes (BSB/M, 2015; MBA, 2017) immigrated to the United States in 1994, he happened to take a career journey as well. Having studied psychology in Portugal in order to teach at the high school level, he pivoted to journalism when he arrived in the States. 

Duraes spent the following years building up an impressive resumé. He worked for the Portuguese-language newspaper Luso-Americano, where he still contributes today. He managed employee-training programs for a major television services provider. He handled (and continues to handle) communications for a council member in Newark. In fact, he juggled all of these jobs at once. But even that wasn’t enough for Duraes, who decided to launch his own enterprise: WNN, a multilingual news platform. Knowing that running a business would require new skills, Duraes decided going back to school would be his next step.

Enter ��ɫ��Ƶ, where Duraes would go on to earn two degrees. In fact, the more you learn about Duraes, the more you see why he needed an education that didn’t just serve him but that could keep up.

While Duraes knew he wanted to further his education, he also knew he had a lot of constraints it would have to accommodate. He was not only juggling multiple professional roles but was also a full-time husband and father of four who needed to be present for his family.

“The only reason why I was successful on my academic journey was the fact there were online options,” he says. “I had to make sure that I was able to juggle everything … and be able to keep working, take care of the family and succeed in college.”

Duraes recounts how his time at UOPX was shaped by that dedication to understanding working adults. From the first encounter with his advisor to the responses he received from his instructors and classmates, the level of insight and understanding he experienced during his education shaped his outlook on success. It also cultivated the skills he needed to build connections, especially in his civic work for the City of Newark.

“We have people from different backgrounds,” says Duraes. “We are able to speak with people with different needs, and I always use my academic background to put them at ease, to make them understand that everything is possible if you work hard toward that goal.”

Duraes’ interest in global communication was especially served at ��ɫ��Ƶ, where he enjoyed being part of a global community of students — a community he remains proud of to this day. He recounts receiving news that he would be honored for his contributions to journalism when he received a celebratory text before he had even shared out the news. “The first person to tell me congratulations was my colleague from ��ɫ��Ƶ,” he says.

Duraes’ UOPX classmate Kevin Norman — who says he and Duraes took as many courses together as they could — explains how Duraes fostered such rich comradery. 

Norman also attests to Duraes’ sense of humor and the relief it provides for stressed colleagues “to cope and grow through any circumstance, big or small.”

It wasn’t always easy, says Duraes, recounting late nights finishing coursework while his kids slept. Through it all, Duraes remained “incredibly thoughtful about higher education,” says Norman, “and a detail-oriented person who wanted to further his belief in doing good business with and for others.”

Duraes was able to bring the skills he honed in his online classrooms to his own work developing programs for employees of the major television services company where he worked. He cites his experience with online learning as one that saved his company millions of dollars as well as helped establish a mode of learning that would thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That same experience played a role in the development of the Worldwide News Network, the news platform Duraes founded with a goal of presenting news stories in multiple languages. He cites his classmates at ��ɫ��Ƶ and his own multilingual family as inspiration: “A family like mine, and people like us, will be able to share many thoughts in different languages.”

Today, Duraes sees how UOPX continues to shape his life. “I always use my example to show there are no limits on your dreams and for the work that you put it into them,” he says. He’s especially proud that his kids point to watching him return to school as inspiration for their own pursuit of higher education.

Duraes isn’t done. He’d like to eventually return to the classroom as an instructor, where his career journey began.

“My goal is to be a teacher at the college level, making sure that I bring everything that I have, all my experience as a journalist [and] as a businessperson, to the students [who] have the same goals or the same dreams that I had when I came to the States.”

It’s a dream — and a story — worth sharing.

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