To speak with Erica Bruno-Martin is to be reminded that the root of the word courage is the (French) word for heart. Here is a Catamount story as full of bravery, care and commitment as any we’ve had the honor to share.

Erica’s story almost didn’t become a UVM one at all.  When she was looking at college as a teenager in 2005, UVM wasn’t really a contender. But her mom Denise had heard enough to suspect that her musical, creative, driven daughter would find a happy home as a Catamount – and convinced her to apply. The pair added in an Admitted Students Day campus stop to their college tour itinerary.

Details of that first visit paint a sweet picture of discovery, from `her glimpses of Lake Champlain at the bottom of Burlington’s hill, to an impromptu rendition of the classic American torch song “Stormy Weather” with a faculty member she had just met, to the encouragement of her loving family in their next conversations.

All of this set the stage for her years at UVM, the ways she’d then thrive through a dynamic career, and stay involved as an energetic alumna, even these years later.

We caught up with her in April 2026 to learn more about the ways she has built a life of connection and meaning, and the role that UVM continues to play in it. We asked her to share her favorite advice for Catamounts who are seeking the same. Below are a few of those lessons, and the stories behind them.

Big Lesson #1: Family is the Foundation

She grew up in southeastern Massachusetts, the second of four daughters to Tim and Denise Barboza Bruno.

Her grandfather and best friend Jack Barboza was a pioneering automotive dealer, the first Portuguese Chrysler dealer in the US. He grew a small empire of 17 dealerships in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Florida and proudly bucked tradition by designating his daughter Denise as the heir to his businesses.

“He said that my mother was just the best suited to take on the work,” Erica recalls proudly. It didn’t matter that it was the norm for owners to pass their assets along to their sons.

Her mom was somewhat reluctant, but “really, really good at it,” Erica recalled. “And she became the 7th female Toyota dealer principal of the nation, and the first female Toyota principal in New England.”

This leadership meant that Denise faced misogynistic male colleagues who were vocally and blatantly unwilling to accept female leadership. Erica heard the stories about incredibly rude comments and treatment – and she saw her grandfather, who had been raised by a business-owning mother he respected and loved, stand by his daughter, confident in her ability to lead.

Erica imagined her future in the family’s line of work, but it comes as little surprise that Denise didn’t want her daughter to contend with what she faced. But Erica had seen what strength and family support looked like, and she was clear that she had a role to play in the family’s legacy.

Knowing what her career path could be did not mean she could skip out on higher education, something that Erica briefly considered but was a point of honor for the older generations.

“My grandfather barely completed 8th grade. My mom went and got an associate's, which was basically a “Mrs. Degree" back then. My generation was the first (in our family) to really go and get bachelor's or potentially master's degrees.  We had those opportunities, which was incredible,” she shared.

“My grandfather knew how I wanted to get into the automotive industry, but he would absolutely not tolerate the idea that I would skip college because of that. He said, ‘You're going to college, first off. I never want you to be denied access to any space, told you're not qualified enough or whatever, especially as a woman, especially as a Portuguese and Italian woman.”

He told her, “You have no reason why you can't walk into any room knowing you are worthy of being there. A degree will help with that.”

"‘If I teach my family anything,' my grandfather said, 'it’s that you're going to have to work and earn absolutely everything you've ever gotten. College is not a handout. You're going to earn it.' He did that with my mom and my uncles, and he did it with us. And I'm really grateful for that, that he had the foresight to say to us that we were not going to be denied into rooms because of our hair, because of our color, none of it. He told us, ‘You're going to go in there and you're going to own it and you’re going to earn it!’"

It challenged her then, and it means a lot to Erica today. “I don't know if I would have gotten through otherwise. Sometimes you just need those people pushing you.”

That pushing meant something extraordinary, coming from her beloved grandfather. “He was my best friend. The best thing in the world was when he said he was proud of me.”

With such closeness, the inevitable losses hit hard.  Jack passed away in 2023. Then came 2025. “Patricia Barboza, my grandmother, died after a seven-year battle with dementia on September 12th, 2025. And then my mom, Denise Bruno, died after a six-week battle with stage 4 bile duct cancer on November 12th, 2025. To say that 2025 was one of my toughest years is an understatement.”

“Luckily, at least I had a job that gave me the time I needed, and I got to have the last three weeks of my mom’s life with her, uninterrupted, which was beautiful.

“We had had a pretty tough relationship, and then a lot of conversations happened in those last three weeks. I realized that she was trying to protect me from a lot of things. Of course I wished she could have told me so much before then, but that's another lesson of life: you never know what someone's holding back.

“That’s how I know now to try to be open emotionally, open all of it. To be brave, be bold, be loud, you know, do all of the things that matter, because, really, what's the worst that's going to happen? The more you can get out of this life, the better. I have learned how short life is, and how much it means to show up as fully as you can.” 

Big Lesson #2: Listen to Your Heart

“When it comes to your college experience, your personal growth and development are just as important as your educational growth and development,” she emphasizes.

That’s what she told current members of ADPi (UVM’s Alpha Delta Pi sorority chapter) during a recent visit.

‘You’re going to experience a lot of opportunities here, academically, professionally, personally, and you've got to optimize on it while you’re at UVM! I told them to make sure they look at those opportunities as a whole person does. Ask yourself: what does your heart want and then what does your head want?”

She says that it was her UVM education that really gave her the confidence to be able to do that.  This was where, she says, “I learned that your heart will not steer you wrong if you can listen to it – and that if you make decisions that don’t have your heart in them, things don’t tend to go well in the end!”

Big Lesson #3: Let Yourself Surprise Yourself

Images from Erica's years on campus, which included winning UVM Idol in 2006, years in Greek Life with Alpha Delta Pi, and receiving the Davis Center Employee of the Year in 2008Award. Courtesy photos.

Even as a student, she knew she wanted to help people, and as one of four daughters in her family of origin, had plenty of practice navigating through different people’s needs.

Becoming one of the first student employees at the Davis Center seemed like a great fit. She has applied to be an information desk assistant, but the Davis Center staff quickly saw that their new staffer had a lot more to offer.

“People listen to you!” her colleagues (she fondly remembers Alan Josey, Frankie Muñoz, Derek Rodricks and Sage) told her. They saw something that Erica hadn’t quite noticed in herself yet – the ability to tell people when something needed to happen in a particular way.

That was when she realized that all of those years keeping peace between siblings and shepherding her younger sisters along to where they needed to be had turned into meaningful life skills.

“The staff told me they wanted me to be a building manager, which sounded like a lot of responsibility,” she remembered, laughing. But even though a little bit daunted, she accepted, and that led to some of her funniest stories from her college days, as well as some of her longest-lasting friendships.

(Ask her sometime about the Halloween night that someone tried to make off with the

president's commencement chair!)

Reflecting back these years later, she says, “the Davis Center definitely taught me to think about how do you not only present yourself well, but how do it in a very intentional way. And also makes sure that you get the result you need.”

It was in those years helping manage “UVM’s Living Room” that a special sort of leader started to emerge

Big Lesson #4: Always Bet on Yourself

She blossomed into a leader who was unafraid to be and to express herself, with a special kind of maturity that allowed her to make authentic connections with the people she encountered.

Just one of many expressions of this was when she reached out to Diana Lee via LinkedIn after coming across a Forbes article about the brilliance of her business approach in building the Constellation marketing firm, and plainly shared some of the roadblocks Lee faced as one of very few Asian women in the marketing and automotive industries.

Erica remembers that it was a point at which she was learning all she could about leadership and the skills she needed, while acknowledging that she was working in a misogynistic culture.

She recalls now, “I sent Diana a message on LinkedIn, just wanting to say ‘thank you!’ for inspiring me. I had had a really rough few months and had found myself thinking that maybe this industry wasn't for me anymore. Her article just gave me a little bit more pep, right when I needed it.

‘Then all of a sudden, not even two hours later, I got a response, thanking me for a beautiful message, and inviting me to have a conversation with her.”

Big Lesson #5: Find your Tribe!

That conversation led to more, and to a Zoom call, then to an invitation to visit Constellation’s New York City office, and to a job offer with the firm. The two went on to become founding members of the Women of Color Automotive Network (WOCAN), an organization that exists “to attract, connect and empower women of color in the automotive industry.”

WOCAN is a chance to gather strength with women who had faced their particular industry’s specific roadblocks, standing in her family’s lineage while staying true to her own individual way of being in the world, in all its complexity.

“Being able to build this legacy is a way of saying, ‘Okay, this is what you can do. No matter how many times you fall, how much you feel like a turtle on your back looking up at the sky thinking I can't get back up, you can flip it over. You can push yourself back up. You can stand up tall. I promise you that no matter what happens, however many curveballs life is going to throw at you (and I promise you that there will be a lot of them!), if you prepare and you know to put on the right type of armor for it, you're going to be fine.”

Big Lesson #6: Be Bold. Be Loud. Be You, Always.

This is a message she shares with her friends and loved ones, and one she pays attention to in her digital presence too. One of her pet peeves is the tendency of social media to focus on the glamorous and attractive parts of people’s lives.

“We always see the highlight reels. And they’re amazing, right? They're really fun, they're really cool, they get good engagement. But I’d much rather see the person who has absolutely hit a wall. Someone who’s like, ’I have fallen down and I wasn't sure if I could get back up.’

“This is much closer to what I’ve experienced. It is truly hard out there. But, for me, I continued on, and I kept doing what I needed to do because I believed at the end of the day that whatever it was I was striving for, or working towards, or trying to build was worth it. And that's something that UVM very much instilled in me: the drive to make sure that you’re doing something in order to make the world a better place.

This was a natural outgrowth of her experiences as a sister at ADPi, a part of the Mosaic Center for Students of Color community, her performing arts life, and her time as a public-facing student employee. That’s what she’s doing now for other women of color, and what she brings to her extended circle of family and friends.

“I do believe I can make this industry better for women. I do believe that I have the power of my voice to be able to convey why someone should never give up. And I think that's the most powerful thing we can do as humans.”

That’s a belief that her peers share. On June 15, 2026, she was recognized as a

2026 Women at the Wheel Honoree by AutoSuccess Magazine, and when we spoke was preparing to deliver a session called “Flipping It Over” at the 2026 Women in Automotive Conference. She was looking forward to sharing her knowledge that, “no matter what happens to you in life or your career, you can always flip yourself over, get yourself back up and stand up tall.”

What This Catamount is Most Proud Of

In a recent LinkedIn post, she reflected on her career and accomplishments to date by saying: 

Here in Catamount Country, we share her confidence.