Alexa Garcia
Alexa Garcia grew up in Covina, about an hour east of USC, raised on 90s rock and a strong work ethic. Nobody in her family had ever gone into engineering. When Alexa told her parents she was heading to USC Viterbi for computer science, they were excited and a little worried. They had heard the same things she had: it’s brutal, you won’t sleep, your hair will fall out.
“I would keep seeing Instagram posts of before-and-after engineering students,” she says, laughing. “And they would literally be bald.”
She went anyway. And from her first semester, she started doing what would become her defining trait at USC: figuring it out as she went.
Computer science wasn’t the right fit. The problems felt too narrow, too isolated. “I would like to see how my solution actually benefits everyone,” she says. So she started reaching out to upperclassmen, asking questions, and landed on the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. The switch took one conversation with an advisor, who mapped out her next four years on the spot, applied her CS credits toward an ISE coding requirement, and sent her on her way.
“I was committed to follow that to a T,” she says.
When the hard semesters came, and they did, she leaned on the community around her. One thing she noticed early about Viterbi: there was no competition between her and her peers. “When it was time to really lock in for an exam, we would all study together and share how we were feeling,” she says. “Knowing I wasn’t alone really helped.” Her parents provided the emotional backbone, always ready to listen, even when they couldn’t quite follow what she was learning. “They knew that in hard times, you can always get through them with the right support,” she says.
What she didn’t know at the time was just how much she would be adding to that plan.
Four Years of Saying Yes
USC Viterbi gave Alexa a degree. It also gave her a blueprint for who she wanted to become, though she had to build it one yes at a time.
She joined the Trojan Marching Band the moment she was accepted, signing up through a Google Form before she’d even moved in. Music has been a constant in her life: her parents took her to concerts growing up, passing down their love of live shows. Her first was the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Staples Center when she was 12. Alto saxophone had been part of her life since middle school, and she wasn’t ready to let it go at USC. What she didn’t expect was how much the band would shape her time there. Her fall semester schedule ran from band rehearsals straight to engineering classes, with exam prep packed in between. The structure, she says, actually made everything easier.
“Band time is when I get to completely switch off from school,” she says. “And as soon as it’s done, I go back to my assignments and knock them out.” But the band did more than reset her: it made her a better engineer. “When you’re doing something creative like music, it really forces you to think outside the box,” she says. “It reframes your bubble from not just engineering.” Interacting with English majors, political science students, dancers, people she never would have met staying inside Viterbi, pushed her thinking in ways her coursework alone never could.
The band also took her to places she had never been, from Chicago, Washington D.C., Portland, Arizona, Maryland, and Japan, where the band performed at the World Expo in Osaka for an international audience.
“That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she says.
By her senior year, she was a squad leader, mentoring freshmen through the same adjustment she had experienced her first semester: new roommate, new major, new city, new everything. She had deep conversations with her squad about goals and futures, offering the advice she wished someone had given her. “They did the same thing for me when I was a freshman,” she says. “I wanted to continue that.”
The same spirit drove her to become Director of Information Systems at the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, where she helped organize a regional conference that drew ISE students from California, Oregon, Arizona, and Washington. She applied for the role for the same reason she took on every leadership opportunity at Viterbi: to give back to the community that had helped her find her footing.
The Engineer of Engineers
ISE, Alexa will tell you, is the engineer of engineers. It is systems-level thinking, looking at how people, processes, and technology interact within a company and finding ways to make the whole thing work better. It’s not one narrow problem. It’s the entire picture.
That philosophy connected naturally with her other passion. A high school cybersecurity teacher, one of only two female STEM teachers she had, spotted something in Alexa and told her she should pursue engineering. Alexa never forgot it. She added a cybersecurity specialization to her degree, and this fall she will join PwC as a cybersecurity consultant, bringing exactly the systems-level thinking her ISE training built. “You’re looking at policy, risk, personnel training, how people communicate,” she says. “ISE trains you to think that way, and it applies really well.”
And she did it all in four years, including a master’s. Through USC Viterbi’s progressive degree program, she is graduating this May with a Bachelor’s in Industrial & Systems Engineering and a Master’s in Product Development Engineering, both from the Daniel J. Epstein Department, having taken graduate classes alongside her undergraduate coursework for the past three semesters.
On her dad’s side, she will be the first grandchild to graduate from college. Family is flying in from Florida.
“It’ll be an important time for me to recognize all the support I’ve gotten,” she says. “I don’t think I would have been able to do it without them.”
Carrying the Yes Mindset Forward
Alexa’s advice to any incoming ISE student is simple: stop trying to plan everything, and say yes when something interesting comes along.
She followed that advice herself. The cybersecurity specialization, the master’s degree, the IISE director role, none of it was on her freshman-year spreadsheet. All of it found her because she stayed open.
After graduation, she plans to hike Yosemite, road-trip up the California coast, and decompress before the real deal starts in the fall. When she’s not doing that, she’ll be at a concert, at a show in LA, or DJing with friends, a hobby that has quietly run alongside her engineering degree the whole time. Beyond PwC, she is keeping her options open.
“I’m trying not to get too stuck on one path,” she says. “I’m taking things as they come.”
For a perfectionist who once tried to plan every year of college in advance, that might be the most important thing USC Viterbi taught her.
Published on April 29th, 2026
Last updated on April 29th, 2026