WEST WINDSOR – It has been a long and exciting journey for Mercer County Community College (MCCC) alumnus Alex Campos ’93 (A.S., Criminal Justice), from his native Costa Rica to his current position as a digital media and marketing strategist. And it all began with getting fired from a job at a Mercer County gas station.

“It was day two or three,” Campos said. “A customer came in and asked for 12 dollars in gas, and I gave him 20. I didn’t know the language; I didn’t know the difference. That’s when I realized I had to do something.”

Campos laughs about it now, but at the time he had no way of realizing that his dismissal was quite fortuitous, and the first step in a journey that would take him all over the world – to France, England, Germany, Lithuania, and back to his adopted home in New Jersey. Within days of being dismissed by his gas station employer, Campos enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at MCCC.

“I lived in Princeton, and when I started looking at schools, Mercer was the one that came up with most people I talked to,” Campos said. “It’s not just a language school, but a college, a career path. It’s a great place to start.”

Campos said he immediately felt at home at Mercer, enrolling in ESL classes and making new friends. He instantly formed bonds with classmates from China, Korea, Russia and India that exist to this day, some 20 years later. One of his classmates remains in the region and works as a nurse in an area hospital, while another lives in New Zealand, where she earned a Ph.D. in Biology.

Campos completed his degree at Mercer and transferred to the Law and Justice program at Rowan University, which accepted all of his MCCC credits. He completed his Rowan degree with a semester abroad in France, where he lived for more than two years before returning to New Jersey.

With fluency in English, Spanish, and French, Campos landed a job as international human resources supervisor at Six Flags, supervising more than 1,200 seasonal international employees for three seasons. He then decided to continue his education at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, earning his master’s degree in International Business. His master’s thesis focused on cross-cultural marketing practices, which he completed following research in Germany and Lithuania.

Campos went on to serve as Marketing Solutions Manager for NJ Advance Media, which provides content, advertising, and marketing services to NJ.com and the Newark Star-Ledger, with services to other daily and weekly newspapers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Recently he relocated to Honolulu, Hawaii, and is now a freelance digital consultant and marketing strategist. His job is to assist businesses through analysis of market trends, particularly in online environments, and develops digital strategies to help his clients grow. This, he says, requires him to be on the cutting edge of technology development.

“I love it,” Campos says of his current career. “I love technology; technology is everywhere. I love the opportunity to learn and give better solutions to my clients.”

Campos says that his life would be a lot different without those three years at Mercer, as MCCC was where he developed his English language skills, social skills, and the positive learning environment that encouraged him to continue his education. And it was at Mercer where he began developing the computer skills that are now an integral part of his career.

“Mercer gave me the confidence for everything I set out to do later on,” Camos said. “Everything I did started at Mercer.”

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