MDC Student Shares Her Story Of Perseverance In PBS Docuseries

Dafina Doctor knows what it means to be resilient.

When she was 13, she left her parent’s strict religious household to live on her own. Throughout her teenage years, she was in an abusive relationship with a man who discouraged her from pursuing an education.

Despite the hurdles, Doctor paved her own path. 

In 2024, she enrolled at Miami Dade College, earning a college-credit certificate in network security and an associate’s degree in cybersecurity. 

Now, the 49-year-old’s achievements are being showcased on the PBS docuseries—Many Roads Forward by Roadtrip Nation. 

It features three students on a 17-day trip from Costa Mesa, California to Seattle, Washington as they meet working professionals who have studied in short-term learning programs like them. Along the way, the trio makes pit stops in Florida, Pennsylvania and Montana.

The program’s first two episodes will air on March 2.

“[Doctor] has a very interesting, rich, substantial story to share,” said Liliana Castillo Segura, an academic program development manager in workforce and professional learning at MDC. “She has this open mind, which has opened so many doors for her being an adult learner.”

Before Doctor embarked on the cross-country road trip, she navigated a tumultuous path.

When she was 21, her ex-boyfriend—whom she has a daughter with—attempted to kill her in front of her home in Lauderhill. 

Following his arrest, she moved to Tallahassee in 1997. For two years, she worked as a secretary specialist for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. 

Still searching to find her footing, Doctor moved back to South Florida, working various jobs in Broward County. 

From 2001 to 2013, she worked as an advertising coordinator for Sports Authority, an office manager and executive assistant to the chief executive officer at Central Charter School in Lauderdale Lakes and as a digital court reporter for the seventeenth judicial circuit of Florida.

“I continually had to tell myself, over the years, that I was better than all of that [trauma],” Doctor said. “I have spent too much time trying to figure out what would be my actual road in life.”

In 2013, she enrolled in Valencia College in Orlando. Three years later, Doctor earned an associate’s degree in paralegal studies.

While in Orlando, she worked for the city, transferring between departments until she landed a job with the city’s chief information officer. She was exposed to the cybersecurity field during a mandatory training session there.

Intrigued by the world of information technology, Doctor returned to South Florida in 2022.

“I didn’t formally register for any schools [at first],” Doctor said. “I was just taking my certifications and just trying to learn from scratch, because I really didn’t have a technical background.” 

But when expenses for her education began to pile up, she took a trip to North Campus and applied for the Kick-Start Program. 

The scholarship initiative, which began in 2020, sponsors college-credit certificate programs that are aligned with high-demand, high-wage jobs. 

Through the program, Doctor received her college-credit certificate in network security and an associate’s degree in cybersecurity.

In January of 2025, while Doctor was in Seattle for an internship, she received an invitation to be part of the cast of Many Roads Forward. She is joined on set by two IT students, one from Massachusetts and the other from New Jersey.

Filming began in California last May. The group embarked on a series of city-to-city road trips in an RV, interviewing IT professionals that became successful after completing short-term programs. 

In May, Doctor will earn a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity from North Campus. She is also finalizing her first book, NØNCOMPLACENT, a mix between a methodology book and a memoir. It chronicles the steps she took to get where she is now.

“I’m very much looking forward to what’s to come,” Doctor said. “As I step across that graduation stage and go on from there.”

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