Monday, May 22, 2023

Media Contact:
Stephen Howard | Manager of Communications | 405-744-4363 | stephen.howard@okstate.edu

A good elevator pitch can be a 60-second work of art. In the time it takes to zip
up a few floors, a crafty salesperson can articulate what they’re about and how their
talents can elevate an organization.

Angel Freytez Jr., 20, happens to be a natural. In March, Freytez’s elevator pitch
helped the Spears School of Business Center for Sales and Service Excellence (CSSE)
earn a top-10 finish at the Arizona Collegiate Sales Competition in Tempe. The hardest
part for Freytez is squeezing his remarkable story into just 60 seconds. His pitch
goes like this:

“Hi, my name is Angel Freytez Jr. I’m a marketing and international business senior
at Oklahoma State University. I’m eager to tell you how I can drive up sales at your
company with my drive, discipline and leadership.

“First, my drive. At the age of 16, I graduated high school in Venezuela. Frustrated
from the lack of civil liberties and opportunities, I decided to move to the United
States. Working two part-time jobs while learning English taught me a lot about business,
which I’d be able to translate in a role at your company.

“Second, my discipline. I spent the past two summers working for the Sewell Automotive
group, a car sales company in Texas, learning their sales process. Having the ability
to integrate a human touch into that process is what differentiates me from other
sales associates.

“Lastly, my leadership. I currently serve as the president of Theta Chi fraternity
at OSU, which allows me to oversee and manage an executive board of 16 members to
achieve our goals and overcome challenges. I’m eager now to find my career, so I’d
love to talk with you about opportunities at your company.”

That isn’t your average elevator pitch, but then again Freytez isn’t your average
college student. He’s the type of person who is never going to let his circumstances
stop him from succeeding — a lesson he learned in his home country of Venezuela, where
opportunities are few.

For decades, Venezuela was one of the most developed and prosperous countries in the
world, that is, until the political upheaval of the 1980s and 1990s. Two military
coup attempts in 1992 went hand-in-hand with severe political corruption and an economic
crisis that saw the gross domestic product of the country fall by a third. Hyperinflation
caused the purchasing power of the average salary in Venezuela to drop by two-thirds
in just a 20-year span.

Freytez was born in 2002, just four years after Hugo Chaves and his totalitarian regime
took office, and his parents simply didn’t see a future in Venezuela for their family.
They instilled Angel with a drive for success and they knew his path to prosperity
would go through America.

“For young professionals, for students, there are no opportunities,” Freytez said.
“You’re basically going to go to school for four or five years, and if you somehow
get a job it’s going to pay you nothing. It’s not going to be enough for you to make
a living. But I was fortunate that I was born in the U.S. when my dad was here training
as a firefighter.”

One of the places Angel Freytez Sr. was training to be a firefighter was at OSU Fire
Service Training, which is among the elite instruction centers for emergency responders.
The quiet Stillwater community made an impression on Angel Sr., and he knew that OSU
would be the perfect school for his son to attend someday.

After Angel’s Jr.’s sophomore year of high school, he and his father made the 2,582-mile
trek from Caracas to Stillwater with a goal of finding a path forward, an eventual
landing spot for the 14-year-old who didn’t speak a word of English.

After touring the town, they wandered into OSU’s Family Resource Center and happened
to meet Ryan Nicklas, who was in the process of earning his master’s degree in teaching
English as a second language while also working for the center. The kindhearted Tulsa
native was making plans for an extended stay in the country of Colombia the following
year, and he immediately saw something in Angel Jr. He decided to help by opening
his home and his talents to the kid from Venezuela.

“So I said, ‘Why don’t you help me with my Spanish, and I’ll help you with your English,’”
Nicklas said. “That’s kind of how it started.”

Angel spent the next few months at the Nicklas’ apartment, where Ryan and his wife,
Gabby, taught English to Angel while getting him accustomed to life in America. They
also mapped out a plan for him to return in two years after he finished high school
in Venezuela.

On Sept. 2, 2018, Angel came back to America to stay with the Nicklases, but this
time it was for good. Angel continued to hone his English and he found a job as a
waiter to save money for school. He also learned how to drive a car thanks to the
patience and bravery of Gabby and Ryan, who suddenly found themselves raising a 16-year-old
despite being in their 20s.

“Sometimes there were these awkward conversations,” Ryan said. “Angel would make friends
and he would say, ‘Hey, I’m going out tonight.’ And we would be like, ‘Where? With
who? What are you going to do? Text us when you get there.’”

Gabby, a 2014 Spears Business management and marketing alumna, chuckles when she thinks
back to those uncomfortable moments where the couple had to balance their desire to
keep Angel safe with the reality that he isn’t actually their son.

“You don’t know until you’re faced with those situations, and then you’re like, oh,
this is what my parents meant when they wanted to know who I was going out with,”
she said.

Gabby is currently pursuing a master’s degree from OSU in global studies and Ryan
is a Ph.D. student in applied linguistics, so Angel couldn’t have hand-picked a better
home to begin his academic pursuits.

It took Angel a year to establish residency, earn enough money to get his own apartment
and enroll at Northern Oklahoma College (NOC) in Stillwater, where he quickly showed
his academic mettle. NOC honored him as the school’s outstanding marketing student
in April 2021.

After transferring to OSU, Angel wasn’t content with simply taking classes. He wanted
to get involved, both socially and academically. Theta Chi fraternity welcomed him
with open arms, and few students have put the resources of Spears Business to work
like Angel. He turned a guest-speaker in professor Dr. Maribeth Kuzmeski’s marketing
class into a multi-year internship at the Sewell Automotive Group, and he put the
Eastin Center for Career Readiness to work crafting his résumé and professional appearance.

He also joined the CSSE, where among other endeavors, he learned to boil his remarkable
story down into a 60-second, award-winning elevator pitch.

“When I say it out loud, it sounds crazy,” said Angel, acknowledging that his journey
to this point has been extraordinary. “At each step, I was just seeing what was in
front of me at the time. I wasn’t looking at the bigger picture. I was just focusing
on what I could do next ­— one step after the other. Looking back at it, it was quite
a bit.”

His next steps could be just as remarkable. Slowly but surely, he’s bringing his family
to the United States. Angel Sr. has relocated to San Marcos, Texas, where he is an
outreach trainer for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and
a senior safety specialist for Texas State University. Angel’s mother, Acelin Mezones,
is in Stillwater on a visitor’s visa, and is applying for citizenship with a goal
to become a nurse or a business owner in town. Angel Jr.’s nephew, 21-year-old Angelo
Freytez (“we treat each other like brothers,” said Angel) will soon start school at
OSU as a pre-med student.

Angel Jr. is spending his summer in Houston as a sales intern for the Sewell Automotive
Group and plans to graduate from OSU with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and international
business with a concentration in sales in December 2023. He could see himself working
for Sewell in a full-time sales capacity in the future, but he’s also considering
law school. Angel would love to help people like himself, who grew up seeking a better
opportunity and don’t know how to make it happen.

“I was fortunate enough that I had people like Ryan and Gabby and that I have really
good family,” Angel said. “A lot of people that immigrate to the U.S., and even some
people that are already in the U.S., they understand that the opportunity is there,
but they don’t have the support beyond those opportunities to help them reach those
goals. I want to help put that structure in place.”