• Andi Garcia-Ortiz

My name is Andi Garcia-Ortiz, and I am a rising fourth-year PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. It has been a privilege to serve as your VP for Communications for the past two years. I love my position, and I hope to continue to advocate for the interests of graduate and professional students. During my time on the executive board, I have gained a plethora of institutional knowledge, which has proved invaluable in our ability to maintain momentum and take on larger grad-centered projects. Amidst the unprecedented uncertainty surrounding the future of the graduate experience, it is imperative that the GPSA continues to strengthen our relationships with the Graduate School and CGSU-UE. As an NSF-GRFP fellowship student, I am particularly focused on advocating for fellowship students. In 2024, after leading many conversations with the graduate school, we won employee-level parking passes for fellows, and I now look forward to ensuring that fellows and students outside of the bargaining unit also benefit from the CGSU-UE agreement with the University. As far as GPSA communications go, I have overhauled the format of the biweekly Communique newsletter to prioritize student events over the previous “greetings from the GPSA president”. I have also advocated our projects to the Cornell University Assembly and Graduate School leadership to promote the importance of GPSA to the greater Cornell community. In 2025-26, I will continue to put students first in all our communications and continually evolve our social media and messaging platforms to best serve our unique community of grad and professional students