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A first-year law student was falling behind. Cherina Wright, then a 3L at Suffolk Law, sat down with him, went through the class outlines, made sure he found his way to the professors who could help. Wright, a National Jurist Law Student of the Year, had her own dual-degree JD/MBA program to finish and a clerkship at the Supreme Judicial Court. She sat down anyway.
First as a law student, and now as Suffolk University’s assistant vice president for student affairs, Wright’s commitment to students—pushing them past what they think they can’t do—has defined her time at Suffolk. This winter, it earned her a Creating the Dream Award as part of the University’s annual MLK Day celebration.
Wright is grateful to work at an institution that hasn’t flinched from the University’s founding commitment to expand access and opportunity. “Access isn’t a given in this society. You have to wire it into your policies—build it in,” she says.
She grew up in Boston, a first-generation college student who spent high school at an all-girls Catholic school in Milton, Massachusetts, where just one lunch table out of 30 was filled with students who looked like her. For college she chose Hampton University, a historically Black college in Virginia, and loved it. But if she expected to find a perfect version of community, the reality, she says, was more complicated—and, ultimately, more practical.
Not everyone was the same. There was colorism. There was class. Hampton’s business school enforced a strict dress code—how you presented yourself, how you wore your hair—and the message underneath was bracingly honest: The professional world will judge you in ways that have nothing to do with your ability. Be prepared. She brought that layered understanding back to Boston when she enrolled at Suffolk.
She earned her JD/MBA degree in 2017, and in 2020 became assistant dean of diversity, equity & inclusion at the Law School. In 2023, she moved into a university-wide role—assistant vice president for student affairs—with authority over both student programs and the foundational policies that underlie them.
Arantxa Melendez, BA ’24, an Afro-Latina student leader who served as president of the Caribbean Student Network, knew she could turn to Wright when she needed advice. One afternoon during her senior year, she came to Wright’s office unable to get out of a funk, a stack of late assignments sitting untouched.
Wright asked: “How do we bring the sunshine back?” And then she drew a line: “You’re not leaving this office until you get one assignment finished.”
Melendez got it done. Just completed a master’s degree from Suffolk’s applied politics program and is already mapping what comes next—youth advocacy, violence prevention, maybe law school.
“What I find remarkable about Cherina—she’s never knee-jerk, never reactive,” says Laura Ferrari, JD/MBA ’96, vice president for student affairs. “When things get complicated—and over the last few years, they have gotten very complicated—she holds the big picture and the individual student at the same time. And she will push back, respectfully, thoughtfully, to anyone, if she thinks we’re not being fair to every group in the room.” For Wright, pushback often means taking a new approach to an old problem: say, an alternative admissions program for students the standard metrics would have missed, or revising academic-standing rules—the slow, unglamorous work of making sure the institution is built to support the students it recruits.
Wright knows firsthand the fears students can experience. She’s been there herself, and it drives the work she does today: “I want the rules and the systems to reflect what I’m always saying: ‘You belong here.’” —Michael Fisch
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spring 2026
Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
More than six decades after the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, that vision continues to inspire the Suffolk community. In January, the University celebrated students, staff, and faculty whose work reflects King’s legacy at the 22nd annual Creating the Dream Awards. Keynote speaker Kim Janey, former acting mayor of Boston and city council president, reminded attendees that King’s dream was “a vision rooted in justice and dignity, and the belief that joy should be shared.” She urged the audience to consider what the dream demands today: “Our work is not done until each and every one of us does our part.” Honorees included senior Jenkyn Attafah, law student Jewel Crouch, and Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Cherina Wright, JD/MBA ’17, as well as three organizations: the National Association of Black Accountants, Progress to Success, and Suffolk CARES, which connects students with vital resources across campus.
What the Dream Demands Today
Former Boston Mayor Kim Janey (center) is welcomed to the Creating the Dream Awards ceremony by the event’s student organizers, juniors Victor Cruz Castro and Kylah Huggins.