Attending Penn State was never in the cards for Nora O’Toole.

Today, she’s the student body president of Penn State, representing over 45,000 undergraduate students at the University Park campus.

Originally from Pittsburgh, O’Toole never planned to stay in Pennsylvania for college. She was prepped to head west to California but quickly changed her mind once the first tuition bill showed up.

Luckily, Penn State was an acceptable second choice.

“What stood out to me was just the community and the people and alumni. It felt like a second family,” O’Toole recalled of her tour. “I was really looking for that connectedness and community, so I’m very grateful to have that opportunity to get my college degree and to be in a place where it’s something I’m looking for.”

A senior cybersecurity major, O’Toole entered Penn State at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020. Most clubs weren’t meeting regularly, so she didn’t join any groups. However, she had always felt strongly about advocacy, so O’Toole spent a lot of time helping students register to vote ahead of the 2020 election.

In the spring, she decided to run in the UPUA elections for the College of IST representative position.

“I had no idea what it was. I was like, why not? Very humble beginnings — I lost my election,” O’Toole said.

Though she was let down by the loss, especially after she had experienced a lot of anxiety while campaigning, she tried to brush it off and move forward. When a position for an At-Large representative, a position not exclusive to any academic college, opened up over the summer, O’Toole applied and was accepted.

“I think that journey through being rejected and then accepted taught me more than if I had just initially gotten [the position],” O’Toole said.

From there, she ran uncontested for the role of Association of Big Ten Students liaison and represented Penn State to the student governments of other conference schools. A month later, the governmental affairs committee needed a new chair. O’Toole threw her name in the pool and was elected internally to the position over older, more experienced UPUA members.

“That was a big one for growth. Being a woman in leadership surrounded by a lot of older men was very tough, especially seniors who didn’t really want to take direction from a sophomore girl. [It was] a big learning experience, for sure,” O’Toole said.

By the spring of 2022, she was faced with an internal decision. She could choose to remain the chair of the committee and stop her involvement there or fully dive into the organization and UPUA leadership. Motivated by Najee Rodriguez and Sydney Gibbard, who were running for president and vice president, respectively, O’Toole decided to take the next step and run for speaker of the assembly. She won in a contested election.

That role oversees the five committee chairs and the legislative branch. To O’Toole, it’s the most difficult role within UPUA, even harder than the role of president, a sentiment she feels strongly about.

“By the end of [my term as speaker], I still had a ton of ideas, advocacy-wise and initiative-wise, that I wanted to continue, and the presidency was the role to be able to do that,” O’Toole said.

While her rise to student body president seems straightforward, it certainly didn’t come without its struggles. As a woman in a male-dominated organization, O’Toole consistently found herself questioning her worthiness.

Conquering those doubts hasn’t been easy, but she credits predecessors Erin Boas and Sydney Gibbard for serving as mentors and open ears while empowering her.

“[Gibbard] once told me, ‘You deserve to be in every room you walk into,’ and she really embodied that,” O’Toole said. “That sticks with me every day, especially since I’m someone who doubts myself and has a lot of overthinking. I think they opened the door for me to see myself in those roles.”

After stepping into more dynamic roles, O’Toole aimed to act as a mentor for younger UPUA members, as she acknowledged how crucial mentorship is.

“If you are a strong woman in leadership and see others struggling, invite them to the table. Bring them under your wing and grow that community,” she said. “I think there’s immense power in the collective empowerment of women, especially in these leadership roles.”

Another cornerstone of O’Toole’s support system is her friends and UPUA collaborators, Ben Brauser, Owen Haddad, and Giselle Concepcion. She expressed her gratitude to them for consistently uplifting and affirming her and for the fun they’ve had together this past year.

The other main challenge she faces is maintaining her mental health. With a position full of daily meetings and decisions on top of being a full-time student, it’s difficult to maintain balance. O’Toole regulates things by setting boundaries for herself physically, mentally, and between her professional and personal lives.

Using several World Campus courses to her advantage, O’Toole stacked her courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving the majority of her time open for meetings with UPUA members, students, and university leaders. However, she recognizes that this is certainly not the case for everyone in UPUA, especially fellow STEM students.

“It’s definitely a balance struggle,” she explained. “Ever since I joined UPUA, [there was] the mindset of ‘I’m a person first, are my physical and mental needs being met?’ And then looking at are my academic needs being met? And then looking at the leadership and ensuring that all those boxes are being filled.”

In discussing this, O’Toole took a quick but important detour to acknowledge the increasingly visible mental health battles of student leaders, driven by exponential expectations, which have sometimes led to leaders stepping down.

UPUA is no stranger to this occurrence, and 17th Assembly President Najee Rodriguez first took a temporary leave of absence that was followed by his permanent withdrawal from the position four months into his term. A letter released to the student body highlighted Rodriguez’s need to focus on his mental health as one of the primary reasons for his resignation.

“I think just normalizing that it’s OK to put yourself first as a person [is important],” O’Toole said. “You don’t want to leave any room for doubt in your capabilities, but also acknowledging that I am struggling is OK.”

Despite the challenges that she faces, O’Toole is deeply passionate about her work. One of the most recent successes for her and the 18th Assembly was the passing of the Basic Needs Endowment, which addresses student poverty — one of the capstones of her and Concepcion’s platform. Even before coming to Penn State, O’Toole struggled with poverty, sharing that she was on food stamps and even homeless for a period in high school.

When she arrived on campus, most of the resources she was looking for were unavailable or had accessibility barriers. Many financial aid sources had specific criteria that, for students dealing with poverty, couldn’t easily be met.

Though the Student Emergency Fund exists for food and housing insecurity, its existence as a fund means that the amount in the fund depends solely on how much gets donated and that it gets depleted each year. Additionally, as it was a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was never meant to be a long-term solution.

After studying the Food and Housing Needs Survey and collaborating with Housing, Food Services, Student Care and Advocacy, and Student Affairs, O’Toole and her administration drafted and passed the Basic Needs Endowment. As an endowment, the money will grow over time, ensuring it doesn’t have to rely solely on donations to continue.

An initial $10,000 was put into the endowment by UPUA, with an additional $50,000 gifted by the Penn State Alumni Association. As the class of 2024’s chosen class gift, the endowment will receive many more donations.

“I cannot thank Paul Clifford, Anand Ganjam, and the Alumni Council and leadership enough for that because that’s just so cool. It just means so much,” O’Toole said about the gift from the Alumni Association, noting she cried when she found out about the donation.

Following her graduation in May, O’Toole will head south to Washington D.C., where she’ll look to work in cyber advocacy, the perfect intersection between her two passions. Her work will include helping to protect groups like think tanks and nonprofits commonly targeted by foreign adversaries.

Though her term as president isn’t complete for another two months, the three years that O’Toole has spent in UPUA has led to some key lessons she already knows she’ll carry with her. Without hesitation, she voiced the importance of welcoming failure.

“Embracing failure leads you closer to the person you’re meant to be, teaches more lessons, and really forces you to take an internal look and reassess who you are and what you want and where you want to go,” O’Toole explained, recalling her very first UPUA election.

Secondly, she’s learned the importance of empathy, emphasizing how important she feels it is to attempt to understand people by putting yourself in their shoes and continuing to uplift others.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, O’Toole highlights the benefit of getting out of your bubble.

“There’s no growth in comfort,” she said.

Through her position as president, O’Toole has been given extensive opportunities to immerse herself in various communities across campus but pointed out that her position wasn’t necessary to do that. The only thing necessary is a passion to learn and grow, which may be the very thing that’s carried her so far these past four years.

“My perspectives and my mindset have really expanded, and it makes me more proud to be a Penn Stater,” O’Toole said. “These communities that Penn State has really speak to what Penn State stands for.”