Alumni and student co-chairs helped raise the bar for CBT 2024

Planning and executing Coming Back Together reunion are a huge endeavor that require more hands-on deck than the staff of the Office of Multicultural Advancement alone. At the top of the list of valuable volunteers are the alumni and student co-chairs, who lend their enthusiasm, expertise and connections to help create an exciting program of events that will draw alumni and student participation.

“What wonderful alumni and student co-chairs we had this year,” says Rachel Vassel ’91, G’21, associate vice president of multicultural advancement. “Their hard work, great ideas and kind hearts truly made a difference in the planning and execution of the reunion.”  

Alumni co-chairs Zhamyr “Sammy” Cueva ’93 and Tara Favors ’95 were integral to the planning and success of CBT 2024.

Cueva, a member of the Multicultural Advancement Advisory Council, is a successful New York City restaurateur with a background in special events planning who shared his professional journey as a member of the entrepreneurship panel during CBT Live! His personal goal for the reunion was to increase the number of Latino and young alumni who attended, in part through programming that would appeal to those audiences. With 600 first-time attendees—many of them Latino or graduates within the last 10 years—he more than achieved that goal.

“With 1,500 registrants, and more than a third being first time participants, it felt like a long overdue family reunion,” says Cueva. “We raised the bar, and I am hoping that the next CBT is even bigger.”

Favors, also a member of the Multicultural Advisory Council, is chief human resources officer at Mutual of America Financial Group. She has a history of supporting students of color at Syracuse, spearheading creation of the Kevin Richardson H’20 Scholarship through the Our Time Has Come (OTHC) program and funding the Brown Favors Quiet Lounge at the Barner-McDuffie House. Her focus was to drive alumni donations and to use the reunion as a conduit for alumni and student connection. Favors’ advocacy, telling her donor story and reminding alumni of the purpose of CBT was effective. The idea of “coming back to give back” resulted in $1.68M raised to date, with over $1M benefiting the OTHC program.

“Our current students are a reflection of who each of us was when we were there,” says Favors, who was awarded a Chancellor’s Citation at the CBT gala. “I think alumni really felt a sense of their influence and responsibility to give them a vision of what’s possible.”

No students felt that more acutely than student co-chairs Jada Marie Knight ’25 and Sofia Rodriguez ’24, G’25. “I didn’t expect to receive so much love from alumni that I never met before,” says Knight. “They were so open to having conversations and connecting and it was nice to be seen as a professional rather than just a college student. The weekend was so much more than I expected.”

Knight and Rodriguez served as ambassadors of the OTHC program through their presence throughout the weekend and played a key role in student involvement. “Jada and Sofia are smart and driven and represent the best of the Our Time Has Come program,” says Vassel.

Both credit their leadership role as a highlight of their college experience.

“Serving as CBT co-chair has shaped the past year and is by far my favorite role I've held on campus in my five years at SU,” says Rodriguez. “Having the opportunity to connect with students and alumni who are Black and Latino was a dream come true. I wish I could do CBT all over again just to experience one of the best weekends of my life.”