Written by Lara Chiaverini
“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” Helmut Schmidt
I am a man of impact. Wishing to work at a place of impact. Doing things that have actual impact on our world. Impact is the blueprint, and the destiny.
Rojaun Samuda picked his major on a whim. He was always good at math and science but, by his own admission, found them boring. His immigrant parents’ voice echoed in his head as he thought about his future after high school; go to college, work hard, find a job, pay your bills. When his guidance counselor suggested pursuing Computer Science, it seemed like a logical path to follow even though he wasn’t completely committed to the journey.
Along the way, Rojaun found his footing, and his community. He developed confidence in his identity as an engineer and as a human. Rojaun’s network of mentors, peers, and friends established a strong foundation for learning and the framework for his future success.
Today, Rojaun is a Senior AI Technical Product Owner at The Hartford, making sure AI products actually solve a real problems, are built correctly, and deliver value. He continues to be a liaison between Industry and UConn at career fairs and speaking to student organizations. He was recently named a 2026 UConn GOLD Rising Star in recognition of his impact within the university, community, and field of engineering.
More than that, Rojaun is a storyteller. He is passionate about sharing his journey with the next generation of students to help them understand that belonging, connection, and personal growth are essential components of becoming an engineer.
We share Rojaun’s story as a conversation with Lara Chiaverini, VII’s Director of Community Engagement & Broadening Participation.
Q: What is your first memory of BRIDGE?
A: I was a member of the Bridge Program coming in the summer of 2018 prior to the start of my freshman year. And my very first memory that I recall is being inside the dining hall near Storrs Center. We were gathered there after moving in and had walked down from East Campus in some excruciating heat. I’m sitting with one of my friends from high school and I see an individual sitting at a table by himself. Back then, I wasn’t one to be outgoing and introduce myself to others. But I just see this individual and I think, let me just say hi to him. I say to my friend, “let’s go sit down next to him and say hi.” And he says, no, he doesn’t want to do that. I said, “okay, this is going to be a solo mission. I’ll go by myself.” I sit next to this person and say, “hey, my name is Rojaun. What’s your name?” He’s mid-eating and he looks up at me, and I can tell he’s thinking, “Who’s this man? Who’s a stranger coming to talk to me at this program that nobody at the time wanted to be at?”
“I’m Darrell,” he says.
That moment kick-started a special friendship that was the foundation for me to graduate college. I don’t graduate college without a few other people’s names on my degree, and Darrell’s name is one of them. He’s also a computer science major. We did industry tours together. We applied for an internship at Cigna our freshman year. We got denied together. Sophomore year, we tried again. We got the internship! COVID-19 hits. We went through the internship together in a virtual form. It’s been an amazing journey ever since. We’re friends outside of work, we’re friends outside of school, and we share a larger group of friends. And it all started at the beginning of the BRIDGE Program by me approaching this young man at the dining hall.
Q: Where do you seek mentorship?
A: I seek mentorship at the dinner table. Seated around my table might be somebody that works in finance, somebody that works in healthcare, somebody that flips burgers, and somebody that works in the cosmetic industry. And me, the engineer. Everyone shares stories at this dinner table, about what they’ve learned from all their different experiences. Like my aesthetician, for example. They sit there each day and see all different types of people and skin conditions. Clients come in every day expecting a solution, yet the aesthetician doesn’t even know the problem.
Consider healthcare workers – nurses, physicians, doctors, or people in the dental industry. Every patient who comes through those doors has a condition that they do not yet know about. Maybe they’ve seen in the past, but they don’t know that person’s specific circumstances. Yet their patients still have the expectation that their provider is able to address it. These stories help me learn new ways to solve problems without having to go through that direct experience.
As engineers, every day is a new question that has not yet been solved. They don’t pay us for knowing the solution. They pay us to figure it out. My mentors show me how they’ve learned in the past, how they use their own experiences or experiences of other people. I save a lot of time by just building environments and ecosystems that are diverse to share memories that will become my own to learn from and adapt.
Q: Was there ever a time when you questioned your path or your ability? What did you do to overcome this?
A: I went to East Hartford High School with a graduating class of around 420 people. I was ranked number six. I didn’t take school seriously. Things just came naturally to me. I coasted through it. I wish I took it a little bit more seriously because I could have been valedictorian and then that would give me a full ride to UConn. But I didn’t, so I took out loans. I arrived at college. Remember that Computer Science was a field that I was completely new to and this new way of thinking. There’s no predetermined formula for figuring out these problems, like in chemistry or mathematics, or physics. I found it for myself. I had to define how to get to the destination by putting a certain sequence of steps together.
I wasn’t ready to do that.
So I go from being a straight A student to seeing these Cs and Fs. But I’m paying for this school. The other school was free. I began to question the purpose. I asked myself, ‘Why am I here?’ Some days, I didn’t even want to be here. That happened frequently throughout college. I’d go into class and didn’t know what was going on.
How did I overcome? A series of events happened. I found other people who were equally stubborn and equally confused. That brought forth support because I no longer felt alone. Once I found my community, I could focus on learning as opposed to feeling alone. Now that I had community, I could focus on what I didn’t know. Before, I focused on learning random content instead of identifying exactly what I needed to learn. These were all questions I shared with my community. And they were asking the same questions in different forms. Before we knew it, we were all bringing unique perspectives together to find an answer. And we were like, “how come none of us thought about this before?”
Q: How did you find purpose?
A: I’m very big on building up a community to overcome challenges and uncertainty. Outside of that, I need a purpose. I don’t have any dependents. My family situation is great. I sleep and order cheeseburgers. I don’t have the most expensive lifestyle. Why do I even need a job? It wasn’t until I did a 10-day study abroad in Brazil that I found purpose by way of a man named Victor.
Victor is a Brazilian man that I interviewed to understand how education systems were funded, how social economic systems work and are established, what are the consequences of these systems, who benefits, and who doesn’t. Victor was also in college, and he said that the Brazilian dream is to see snow (mind you, I was born in Jamaica. I hate snow.) I told him to stop with that nonsense dreaming. But that was his thought to me. I said, “all right, Victor, do you believe that you’ll ever see snow in your lifetime?”
And he said, “no.”
There’s too much to overcome, he told me. The system that he was brought up in, the family that he had to support. The lack of financial mobility in order to provide that support due to the system and other life circumstances. It was just uninspired.
And I was like, dang, Victor, that sucks.
I felt connected to him because we both felt helpless. But my version was that I wanted to help him and I didn’t know how. So my purpose and passion became anthropology and cognitive science. I want to understand people’s mindsets and what brought them there and how they make decisions for themselves. I want to understand cultures, but through their experiences.
I think what stopped Victor from understanding his ability to see snow is that nobody in his community had done it. Nobody had overcome yet. To some degree, it takes a bit of ambition and delusion to be the first to overcome. And too many people are waiting to see the first person do it before they take initiative themselves. So I’m trying to be the first person so that more people can be encouraged. I seek to be in those positions. I operate with the assumption that somebody is always watching. I assume somebody’s always watching for inspiration because they see themselves in me. Maybe it’s a young boy from Jamaica who is at a predominantly white institution. Maybe he is unsure of his major and thinks he has no experience or skills. Everybody else is talking about how they were grandfathered into their career path and their family did this or that. Their dad did it, their mom did it. My dad didn’t go to college. My dad didn’t graduate from high school. But there’s a story of perseverance that can be told from looking at my life, and I know there are other people who will relate to it. So who am I not to proceed with excellence in achieving a goal?
Rojaun is one of four GOLD Scholars in the College of Engineering who came through what is now known as the Vergnano Institute for Impact (VII) as an undergraduate student. VII is proud of their history of excellence, advocacy and care. To learn more about VII, please visit https://vergnano.institute.uconn.edu/