A beginning -- for the whole family

At Brighton High School, the word “Nairobi” will not make most people think about an East African capital.

Instead, Nairobi here is a 16-year-old girl, Nairobi Oller, one of the youngest in this year’s graduating class, and the only one from Brighton High who will be attending Boston College next year on a full-tuition scholarship.

With a 4.73 out of 5.0 GPA, Oller was accepted at all of the eight colleges she applied to, including Suffolk, Northeastern, and Bryant universities, Babson and Bentley colleges, and UMass-Amherst. 

Education, however, has not been an old tradition in her family.

In fact, Oller is not only the first in her family to go to college, but also the first to graduate from high school. Her parents do not speak English and her father, who is a janitor, never learned to read and write.

“My brothers and I tried to teach him,” Oller said. “He knows how to write some things, but not everything.”

As for her mother, Oller said she wanted to go to college but she couldn’t afford it. In the Dominican Republic, where Oller’s family comes from, “it’s really hard to go to college because of how expensive it is,” Oller said.

Oller and her family moved to the United States eight years ago, and at the age of 14, Oller got a part-time job with Blue Cross Blue Shield as an office assistant.

“When I was a sophomore, I had to get a work permit,” she said. “By doing that, I was helping my mom so she wouldn’t have to give me money.”

Since then, she has been working summers and 10 hours per week during the school year. She also finds the time to volunteer at the Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center, where she delivers flowers to the sick, and to help her parents by translating between English and Spanish.

She said mathematics is her favorite subject and she plans to major in business because she likes numbers and dealing with money, and would like to become an accountant. She is not currently involved in school sports, but is thinking about maybe playing soccer in college.

So what about the name?

Oller said it was her aunt who suggested that she be named after the capital of Kenya.

“It’s really unique. I get a lot of compliments on it,” she said, adding that she plans to visit the African city someday.

Every year, Boston College gives out 10 full-tuition scholarships to academically talented seniors from Allston-Brighton. Oller was this year’s only Brighton High School recipient of the scholarship.