Dreaming big and being engaged in their futures was Maria Echaveste’s message to 120 schoolchildren from Clovis Unified School District who visited Fresno State on Friday.

Echaveste, the former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001, dreamt that she could get an education.

“That I could become an attorney, and what I really wanted to do was to be able to do work that was going to have an impact on people, so that other children would have an opportunity to fulfill their dream,” Echaveste said.

Through her love of books as a child, Echaveste knew that there was a life out there beyond the farmworker labor camps of California. She would read them as a departure from the realities of being the eldest of seven children and cleaning the house.

“I was always escaping, reading books, so I knew from my books that there was another world out there,” Echaveste said.

A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Echaveste ­knew that she wouldn’t be able to leave the Central Valley so easily.

“I also knew from a traditional Mexican family that I wasn’t going to be able just to leave home,” Echaveste said. “You don’t do that. You either get married and since my dad never allowed me to go on dates ever in high school, that wasn’t going to happy very easily.”

Echaveste figured out that the only way to leave home was to go to college.

“Beyond that, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” Echaveste said.

As a huge science fiction fan, when Echaveste decided to attend Stanford University, she wanted to become an astronaut. Things didn’t go as planned, though.

“As it turns out, I couldn’t quite get up early enough in the morning to take all my calculus classes at college,” Echaveste said. “So I ended up majoring in anthropology.”

“But did I dream that I might one day work in the White House for a president? No. I never dreamt that,” Echaveste said.

Fresno State President Dr. Joseph Castro also spoke about his background as a son of immigrant farm laborers and echoed Echaveste’s message.

“As Maria said, we want to urge you to aim high. If the two of us can do the things we’ve done,” Castro said. “She’s done incredible things beyond what I’ve been able to do in my life.”

Echaveste also wanted students to be engaged in their futures “because it allows us to make our dreams a reality.”

“Fundamentally,” Echaveste said. “Every single 18 year old, there are so many people making decisions for them that are going to affect the air they breathe, the water they drink, whether they’re going to have good paying jobs, whether they’re going to come out of college with extraordinary debt and they’re not voting.”

Echaveste was in the public spotlight recently after President Barack Obama nominated her to become the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Obama dropped the nomination after gridlock in Congress.

She was in Fresno to serve as a keynote speaker for the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation’s 13th annual Developing Hispanic Leaders Gala at the Fresno Ballroom in downtown.