Guiding Hand

Read more about Evansville’s international community in the January/February 2025 feature story.

After immigrating to the U.S. as a child, César Berríos had to grow up fast. He found a stable community in his new hometown.

His family immigrated from Nicaragua to San Francisco, California, through temporary protective status in 1997 when Berríos was six. Adjusting to life in northern California, despite help from relatives, proved difficult, so the family joined his mother’s cousin in Evansville.

“There were job opportunities for them,” Berríos reflects. “They were able to find work here, and the cost of living was manageable for an immigrant family.”

His parents each worked two jobs to take care of their family of four, including Berríos’ younger brother Melvin. They relied on help from other Latin American immigrants and Nativity Catholic Church, which moved its Spanish-language masses to Holy Rosary Catholic Church in 2016.

Berríos graduated from Harrison High School in 2009 and earned history and Spanish degrees from the University of Southern Indiana before joining Regional Title Services as a closer. A priest persuaded Berríos to join the Catholic Diocese of Evansville’s Office of Hispanic Ministry as an outreach coordinator. There, he realized his passion for helping students achieve their dreams through higher education.

After returning to USI to get a Master of Second Language Acquisition, Language Policy, and Culture Studies, Berríos earned his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership in 2023. He found his calling in USI’s Multicultural Center for eight years, first as a program advisor and then as associate director. Today, he is the assistant dean of students and lives in Evansville with his wife and three daughters.

“I feel like I’m able to use my experience of once being a student myself — a first-generation student, an immigrant student — to provide that guidance that I know I needed,” he says.

Outside of USI, Berríos attends Holy Rosary Catholic Church and serves on the advisory board of the newly formed Immigrant Welcome & Resource Center.

“Whenever you start getting involved … you start to get to know a lot of people, and people start getting to know you, and it makes the community even better,” Berrios says. “So, I just want to continue to meet people, to give back to the community that’s given so much to me.”