Eric Donado came to campus convinced he was going to study politics or public policy. “That quickly changed once I started taking courses in other departments,” he says. At the end of his sophomore year he declared a concentration in economics and is pursuing a certificate in information technology and society. “Ultimately I decided to study economics because I like the approach. The models that describe behavior and society, while not perfect, they kind of click for me,” he explains.  
 

Two courses in particular guided Donado toward economics. In his freshman year he took Burton Malkiel's freshman seminar “The Stock Market.” During his sophomore year he took a class on social entrepreneurship called “Ventures to Address Global Challenges” with visiting professor John Danner of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The class taught him to think about the poor not as recipients of aid, but as consumers.
 
“For too long we’ve thought of business and society as being against each other, when in fact they can be partners,” he says. The class brought in a range of guest speakers who talked about the challenge of operating in a market where consumers earn less than a dollar per day.
 

Donado is the youngest of three boys born to Colombian parents who immigrated to the United States with two toddlers, Donado’s older brothers. In Colombia, his parents were in their last year of law school before they decided to leave what was then a drug-ravaged country. They arrived in New York City with a suitcase, $500 and the clothes on their backs so that they could begin a fresh life with their young family.
 

Donado was born in New Jersey and later moved to Miami with his family. He didn’t intend to apply to Princeton. “I thought Princeton was out of my league,” he says. A guidance counselor encouraged him to apply through Questbridge, which matches students from low-income backgrounds with colleges. Though admitted to business and government programs at other schools, Donado picked Princeton both for its focus on undergraduates and on a broad liberal arts education.
 

“The bottom line is we’re not competing with grad students or law students for the attention of the professor,” he says, recalling the times he’d been invited to the homes of professors for dinner.
 

On campus, Donado serves as co-president of Princeton Microfinance Organization, which raises awareness about investing in developing countries and sponsors benefits, including a concert benefitting a village bank in Tajikistan. He also helped organize their annual colloquium featuring microfinance speakers from around the world. 
 

He has traveled widely to Spain, Italy, France, England, China and the Dominican Republic. He speaks Spanish and is learning Portuguese. With his background in economics, Donado hopes to start a business like the ones he studied in his social entrepreneurship seminar.
 

The first in his family to go to college outside of Florida, Donado emphasizes the importance of staying in touch with family and friends from home: “I made sure not to lose contact with the people I cared about back home," he says. "It makes you not lose sight of who you are deep down and also helps you gain appreciation for where you are now.”