Nivia Fontanez Took the Long Route to the Right Career

A radiology room is a place where small details matter. A patient may need to move slightly to get into the correct position, an instruction may need to be explained differently, or someone who is uncomfortable may not be able to move as expected. Before producing a useful medical image, the technologist has to think about the patient, the equipment, the procedure, and all the details that connect them.

For Nivia Fontanez, that combination of technical work and human interaction has become a familiar part of her career. The Bronx-based radiology technologist works with X-rays, CT scans, and bone density studies. She holds a New York State radiologic technologist license and is also qualified to administer contrast for CT studies. The career brings together technical knowledge, attention to detail, and regular interaction with patients.

It is also very different from the career she imagined when she first went to college.

Fontanez's first degree was in computer science. She later worked in finance, bartended while attending school, became a certified nursing assistant, and eventually returned to college to study radiology. Her professional life did not follow one carefully constructed plan. Instead, she learned what suited her by working, changing directions, and being willing to become a student again.

Choosing a career before you know what work feels like

Fontanez grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Jane Addams High School in 1999. She continued her education at SUNY Cobleskill, where she earned an associate degree in computer science in 2001. At the time, computer science was the direction she had chosen, but it would not become the field where she ultimately built her career.

She later worked in finance. Like many people who enter the workforce after college, Fontanez was gaining something that is difficult to have when choosing a degree as a teenager: experience with what working every day actually feels like. A career can sound appealing in a classroom or on paper and feel very different once someone is living it.

That experience can lead to uncomfortable questions. Do I want to keep doing this because I genuinely enjoy it, or am I continuing because I have already invested time in it? Would changing direction mean that my previous education was wasted? Is it worth becoming a beginner again when I already have experience somewhere else?

For Fontanez, changing direction eventually became more appealing than staying on a path simply because she had already started down it.

Going back to school meant becoming a beginner again

Career changes often sound much cleaner when they are described years later. Someone says they left one industry, returned to school, and found a new profession. That summary leaves out much of what happens in between.

Fontanez's transition required her to continue working while pursuing another education. She bartended to help get herself through school and also became a certified nursing assistant. Returning to college was different from enrolling immediately after high school because she now had other experiences and responsibilities competing for her time.

There were practical trade-offs involved. Continuing along an established professional path would have been easier in some ways. Pursuing radiology meant investing additional time in school and accepting that she would have to learn a new profession from the beginning. It also meant trusting that changing her mind about her career wasn't the same as admitting everything she had done before was a mistake.

Fontanez continued with the new direction and earned her bachelor's degree in radiology from Concordia College in 2020. By then, her background included computer science, finance, bartending, nursing assistance, and radiology. Those experiences may look unrelated on a résumé, but several of the skills she developed along the way became useful in unexpected ways.

What bartending can teach someone who works with patients

Bartending and radiology are very different professions, and the responsibilities involved should not be confused. However, working behind a bar teaches a person quite a bit about dealing with different personalities.

A bartender may interact with someone who wants to have a conversation and then immediately serve another person who barely wants to speak. Customers can be patient, distracted, impatient, friendly, or frustrated. Meanwhile, the bartender must juggle multiple responsibilities and keep paying attention to what is happening around them.

Those interpersonal skills did not disappear when Fontanez moved into healthcare. As a radiology technologist, she also encounters people with very different personalities and needs. A patient may be nervous about a CT scan, uncomfortable because of an injury, or confused by an instruction that seems straightforward to someone who works in medical imaging every day.

The setting is completely different, but one basic lesson remains useful. The same approach doesn't work for everyone. Recognizing that can make communication easier, especially in an environment where a patient may already be dealing with stress or uncertainty.

Medical imaging requires more than operating equipment

Fontanez's earlier education in computer science also takes on a different meaning when viewed alongside her current career. Radiology is a technology-heavy field, but working as a technologist involves much more than operating imaging equipment.

Fontanez must consider positioning, image quality, patient communication, safety requirements, and the specific study being performed. Her CT work can include additional responsibilities, including administering contrast when appropriate under established procedures.

Experience helps many of these responsibilities become more familiar, but familiarity creates its own challenge. A procedure that a technologist has performed many times may be completely new to the patient. Something that takes up a small part of Fontanez's normal workday could be an appointment the patient has been thinking about for several days.

That difference in perspective is one reason communication matters. Patients do not need to understand every technical detail behind their imaging, but they do need to understand what is being asked of them. A machine can produce an image, but it cannot recognize when a patient is confused by an instruction or needs something explained another way.

A career does not have to make perfect sense in reverse

In 2025, Fontanez received a Best Technologist Award, recognizing a profession she hadn't originally planned to enter when she graduated from high school.

It would be easy to look back from that point and create a neat story in which every earlier experience somehow prepared her for radiology. Her career was not that carefully planned. Her computer science degree was not secretly the first step toward medical imaging, and working in finance was not part of a strategy to eventually enter healthcare. She bartended to get through school.

Those experiences still mattered, even without fitting into a larger plan. Computer science gave Fontanez an early technical education. Finance exposed her to a different professional environment. Bartending required her to communicate with many kinds of people. Becoming a certified nursing assistant gave her experience closer to patient care. Radiology eventually offered a career where technical responsibility and human interaction could coexist.

People may feel pressure to explain away past choices after changing careers, especially when they invested years of education or work in another field. Fontanez's experience offers a more practical perspective. An earlier career doesn't have to be a mistake just because it wasn't permanent.

People sometimes discover what fits them by first discovering what does not. An education can remain valuable even when someone eventually works in another field, and skills learned in one job can become unexpectedly useful years later.

Nivia Fontanez did not leave high school knowing that she would eventually become a radiology technologist. Her career took several turns before she found the combination of technical work and patient interaction that suited her. Rather than making those earlier chapters irrelevant, the change in direction gave her a wider range of experiences to bring into the work she does today.