What happens when a nationally competitive gymnast graduates from one of America’s top universities and chooses to dedicate her early career to closing the education gap? You get Ciara Rampolla — a name that may not yet be a household word, but one that represents exactly the kind of quiet, ground-level impact that reshapes communities from the inside out.
Ciara Rampolla’s story is one of purposeful reinvention. Born and raised in Torrance, California, she earned recognition as an elite gymnast, excelled academically at Northwestern University, and now works daily to ensure that underserved students in Chicago have access to the kind of math education that can change the trajectory of their lives. It is a journey worth knowing.
Who Is Ciara Rampolla?
Ciara Rampolla is a Math Tutor at Saga Education, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization focused on delivering high-impact, personalized academic tutoring to students in under-resourced schools. Born in March 2001 in Torrance, California, she is the daughter of Mark Rampolla — the entrepreneur behind ZICO Coconut Water and a champion of purpose-driven business — and Maura Rampolla, a public health professional and alumna of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
With such a background, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ciara developed a strong orientation toward service, discipline, and long-term thinking from a very young age. What is remarkable, however, is just how many dimensions of excellence she managed to pursue simultaneously.
A Gymnast With Championship Credentials
Before Ciara Rampolla was tutoring algebra, she was landing floor routines at regional championships. Her career in competitive gymnastics, trained through Flight School Gymnastics in California, produced a string of impressive results that speak to both her talent and her relentless work ethic.
In 2016, she took first place in the All-Around at the IGI Chicago Style competition at Level 8, showcasing balanced mastery across vault, bars, beam, and floor. The following year, she won first place on Floor Exercise at the 2017 San Diego Classic, and then claimed both a first place on Floor and a second place All-Around at the 2017 Level 9 Charity Choice Invitational. In 2018, competing at the Level 9 Western Championships, she scored an impressive 9.575 on floor to finish second overall in a field of elite regional talent.
These were not local participation ribbons. Level 9 gymnastics in the United States is a demanding tier where athletes train twenty to thirty hours per week, execute complex skills across four apparatus, and compete against the most serious young gymnasts in the country. A 9.575 at Western Championships reflects not just raw ability, but years of methodical refinement under pressure.
What makes these achievements even more remarkable is what was happening at the same time. Ciara was maintaining a 4.48 GPA at South High School in Torrance. For most students, that alone would be a full-time pursuit.
Northwestern University: Where STEM Meets Social Purpose
Following her graduation from high school in 2019, Ciara Rampolla enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois — consistently ranked among the top ten universities in the United States. There, she pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Biology, complemented by minors in Global Health and Psychology.
This academic combination was far from accidental. The Biology major gave her a rigorous foundation in scientific reasoning and data interpretation. The Global Health minor opened her thinking to systemic issues — how poverty, access, and geography shape health and life outcomes at a population level. The Psychology minor added depth to her understanding of how people learn, struggle, and grow.
Together, these three disciplines cultivated a kind of holistic intelligence that would prove invaluable in a tutoring environment, where success depends as much on emotional attunement as it does on content mastery. She graduated from Northwestern in 2023.
Ciara Rampolla at Saga Education: Teaching as a Form of Advocacy
Upon graduating, Ciara made a choice that surprised some who might have expected a biology graduate to pursue research, medicine, or a conventional public health career. Instead, she joined Saga Education as a full-time math tutor — a decision that revealed just how intentional her path truly was.
Saga Education is a nonprofit organization operating in high-need urban schools across the United States. Its model centers on in-school, high-dosage tutoring, meaning students receive consistent, personalized math instruction integrated directly into their school day. Research has shown that this approach can produce learning gains equivalent to adding an entire year of math instruction within a single semester. For students who have spent years falling further behind — often through no fault of their own, but due to under-resourced classrooms and systemic neglect — this model can be genuinely life-changing.
Ciara brings something unusual to this work: the mindset of a competitive athlete. In gymnastics, the distance between a 9.0 and a 9.5 is entirely a product of deliberate, iterative practice. The same principle applies to math fluency. She works with students to identify not just what they do not know, but why — and then builds customized, scaffolded pathways back to confidence and competence.
Her psychology background equips her to recognize when a student’s struggle is rooted in anxiety rather than ability — a distinction that is easy to miss and enormously consequential. A student who freezes during a math test because of fear is not the same as a student who lacks understanding. The intervention for each is different, and knowing the difference is the mark of a truly skilled educator.
She has also integrated movement-based and mindfulness strategies — borrowed from her years of gymnastics training — to help students manage stress and engage more fully with abstract material. This is not a gimmick. Research increasingly supports embodied learning as an effective tool for students who struggle with traditional, text-heavy instruction.
What Ciara Rampolla’s Story Teaches Us
In a cultural moment that celebrates fast achievement, loud platforms, and rapid visibility, Ciara Rampolla represents a quieter but arguably more enduring model of impact. She could have leveraged a Northwestern degree and a high-profile family name into any number of prestigious career paths. She chose instead to show up, daily, in underfunded classrooms in Chicago, working directly with the students who need the most support.
This kind of grounded, hands-on commitment to educational equity is exactly what research says actually moves the needle. Programs like Saga Education do not make headlines as often as splashy edtech startups, but the evidence for their effectiveness — and for the irreplaceable value of a caring, skilled human tutor — is robust and growing.
Ciara is still in the early stages of her career. Her trajectory — from elite athletics to rigorous STEM education to community-embedded teaching — suggests a depth of preparation that most people spend decades building. The natural next chapters might include leadership roles within Saga Education, graduate studies in education policy or public health, or broader advocacy work in the educational equity space.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ciara Rampolla
Who is Ciara Rampolla and what is she known for?
Ciara Rampolla is a Northwestern University graduate and former competitive gymnast who currently works as a math tutor at Saga Education in Chicago, Illinois. She is known for her dedication to improving math outcomes for underserved students and her impressive record of achievement across both athletics and academics.
Where did Ciara Rampolla go to college?
She attended Northwestern University, graduating in 2023 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and minors in Global Health and Psychology.
What gymnastics achievements did Ciara Rampolla earn?
Ciara competed through Level 9 gymnastics in the USAG system and earned first-place finishes at the 2016 IGI Chicago Style All-Around, the 2017 San Diego Classic on Floor, and the 2017 Level 9 Charity Choice Invitational. She also scored a 9.575 on floor at the 2018 Level 9 Western Championships, finishing second overall.
What does Ciara Rampolla do at Saga Education?
She works as a full-time math tutor, providing high-dosage, personalized instruction to students in Chicago’s under-resourced public schools. Her role involves building foundational algebra skills, addressing math anxiety, and fostering academic confidence in students who have historically been underserved by the education system.
Is Ciara Rampolla related to Mark Rampolla of ZICO Coconut Water?
Yes. Ciara Rampolla is the daughter of Mark Rampolla, the entrepreneur who founded ZICO Beverages and later co-founded Powerplant Ventures, and Maura Rampolla, a public health professional and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health alumna.
Conclusion
Ciara Rampolla’s story does not fit neatly into any of the standard narratives we tell about young high-achievers. She is not a startup founder, a social media personality, or a conventional career climber. She is something rarer: a disciplined, multidimensional person who has translated every experience — gymnastics, biology, global health, psychology — into service for others.
For students considering careers in education, for educators wondering whether athletic backgrounds carry value in the classroom, or for anyone interested in the real face of educational equity work, Ciara Rampolla offers a compelling and instructive example.
Keep an eye on this name. The trajectory is still being written — and if the first chapter is any indication, the rest will beworth reading.
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