My name is Anna Luisa Pace. I am a non-traditional graduate student at Aurora University in Aurora Illinois. I am the only daughter of immigrant parents and sister to six brothers. We were raised in an environment of food, financial, and housing insecurity during our entire childhoods. I learned to translate legal documents, fill out legal documents, and to be an interpreter by the age of seven. I can clearly remember asking my dad for bits of paper out of his wallet to fill out our free lunch forms for public school. I did not fit in with the kids at school when it came to clothes, shoes, cheerleading, sports, etc... My parents could not afford to feed us, much less splurge on proper clothing for their only daughter or for extra curricular activities. By the age of thirteen, I was working six days a week at a local Hispanic bakery. I learned early on from my parents that I needed to work if I wanted to eat or to take a hot shower. I was an honor student through high school, but, I did not fit in with most of my peers. I used my brain to force the other kids to accept me as an equal. I studied hard and I was proud of the grades that I brought home. Once I had to go to work, I ended up not being able to balance both. School suffered. I dropped out of high school numerous times. However, I always dreamt of going away to college. I kept going back, even when I became a teen mom. I knew that I did not want to be another statistic in my own opinion. I went back one final time, worked hard to get back into honors classes, worked a part time job, and graduated with a toddler. The only people at my graduation were my parents and their neighbors, the Evans. All those years of struggle and my accomplishment felt like just another day. I felt like I was at a crossroads in life. I fulfilled my goal of graduating high school. I went full time at work and was able to purchase health insurance for myself and my child so that I could get off of public aid. I married the father of my son and had three more children with him. I always wanted to go to college, so I made a new goal for myself. I was able to gain a better paying job and take night classes here and there. I am proud to say that I volunteered with my church, the children's schools, and graduated with my associates degree in psychology when my first born graduated high school. After more than twenty years with their abusive father, I divorced my first husband despite all the threats of physical, mental, and financial harm. I learned to love myself and to trust my adult children with the truth of what happened between their mom and dad. I was lucky to find my partner through the turmoil I was experiencing. With his support, I got myself together and continued with my higher education goal. I received my bachelor's degree in psychology in 2024. Now, I am pursing my master of business administration with a concentration in leadership. I hope that the committee will find that I have faced many obstacles in my life. However, I did not let them defeat me. I took what I learned and used that knowledge to push myself forward with determination and grit. Your scholarship will be a great help. Thank you.

My life journey has been full of twists, turns, obstacles, and miracles. I am one of seven children born to immigrant parents. My father has a third grade education while my mother started to work as hired help at the age of six with her mother. To this day, my mother cannot read or write. I grew up watching her struggle and feel like she was less than because of her lack of education and opportunities. I followed the same path that she did. I thought that being a good mother and good wife meant that I needed to silently suffer at the hands of my partner. I am a survivor of intimate violence in a relationship and marriage that was well over twenty two years. It took the words of my Angel of a mother "Daughter, you were born here. You have the benefit of going to school and bettering yourself. You don't have to do as I did and give your life to a man that doesn't love or respect you". I cried and I knew that I could break the cycle with her strength and encouragement. I took control of my life. I went through a bitter divorce that lasted two years. I walked away with the clothes on my back and an agreement to sell our family home to our oldest child where I about broke even. I have always been outgoing, supportive, and an advocate for others. I lacked the courage at home and I wore that shame in my home. I did not share what I was going through because I felt almost like a fraud because I would fight the good fight for others but never myself. These experiences helped me realize that through education, I can reach heights where I can be a bigger agent of change through strong policies and action. Throughout this turmoil, I met my current husband whose silent strength and out loud love helped me to go back to school for my undergraduate degree. He knew how important higher education was to me. He supported my dream of going back to school in my forties. He is still rock solid by my side as I pursue my graduate degree to meet the goal of being a change agent. I believe in mentoring the youth of our future. I have personally mentored troubled girls. I have coached middle school volleyball. I have assisted in middle school basketball. I have given my time and talents to our church. I believe that I can break my glass ceiling in my current role and move up to a position at my employer where I can be a policy maker and drive change. I believe that I could foster employee involvement with mentoring the youth in our city. Being awarded this scholarship will allow me to be able to ease the financial burden to my family of my dream of higher education. This scholarship will help me open doors to a more fulfilling future. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from the committee.

I believe that education can help reduce intimate partner violence by lifting the veil on women in intimate partner violence relationships. A higher education can help women understand that they have a chance to survive on their own despite what their partner has repeatedly told them. A higher education will open doors to career opportunities that will translate to a woman being able to financially support herself, her children, and her pets. Writing from a personal experience lens, I can wholeheartedly affirm that women whose partner's perform acts of violence against them believe the verbal abuse and lies that the partner continually showers upon them. Predators look for women with vulnerabilities that can be exploited so that their own egos and self worth is boosted by beating down the person that loves them be it physically, verbally, emotionally, psychologically, or financially. When these women are pounded down to a nub, then the violent partner can re-shape the woman to the image that he or she deems to be a deserving partner. Many times the woman suffering the abuse has friends or family encouraging her to leave. However, the hold of the violent partner is trauma based and the woman cannot find the courage to finally leave. In other worse scenarios, the woman keeps the abuse to herself out of shame, guilt, or remorse. She may be filled with shame that her partner perpetrates such acts against her. She may feel guilt because her partner has convinced her that he or she had to commit the act because of some infraction the woman did. Or she may feel remorse because she is living that lifestyle alone or with her children and feels like a failure because she can't do any better. I lived this life for over twenty years. I was a teenage mother. The first act of intimate violence occurred when our first born was a few months old. It was a cold rainy day. We were outside of his rooming house. I don't know what we were arguing about. The baby was in his carseat on the gravel ground with a blanket over it to keep him warm and dry. My partner reared back and delivered a smack so hard to my face that I saw stars. I was ashamed, hurt, embarrassed, and crying. He let me load the baby up into my car and leave. He then came back on bended knee to apologize and promise that it would never happen again. It was just that I frustrated him so much... This cycle would repeat itself the entirety of our marriage. If I'd had the opportunity to obtain a higher education, I believe that I would have been exposed to other strong female figures. I would have seen that what was happening to me was not normal and not okay. I believe that learning about the world and learning that I could expand my horizons with an education, I would have had the courage to leave the first time it happened. An educated mind teaches us critical thinking. Critical thinking will lead to measured actions. Measured actions will lead to a better life. Thank you for taking the time to read this submission. I look forward to hearing from the committee.

My educational goal has always been to seek higher knowledge through formal education ever since I was a child. My college career has taken a very diverted route and many years to come to fruition. Using my brain to excel in my early education years helped me "fit in" because we were raised in a very impoverished home and environment. My parents are immigrants to this land. My father has a third grade education, while my mother went to work by the age of six as a house cleaner and servant with her mother. Mother had no formal education and cannot read or write. I have six brothers and the four oldest of us knew from an early age that we were also responsible for the survival of our family. We all went to work at young ages. I started to work six days a week at a local bakery from about three in the afternoon to nine or ten in the evening. As a result, I became truant in my freshman year of school. I went from an accelerated student to a barely passing freshman. In my sophomore and junior years of high school I would re-enroll and drop out many times. I became a teenage mother working full time with no prospects for a good future for my son and myself. I had a lightbulb moment after he was born. I knew that I didn't want to repeat the cycle of poverty and that the only way to do that was to get an education. I went back to high school for a final time. My counselor at the time had seen me fail many times and laughed out loud when I said I was going to finish this time. That lit a fire under me because I knew that I had let myself down and that everyone around me did not believe that I would ever succeed. I graduated as a nineteen year old with my son in the stands. My parents, my son, and their neighbors were the only people at graduation for me. I was super proud of that accomplishment and I knew that I would not stop there. I found a job in local government where I saw that I needed to use my intelligence to move up in the corporation. I was able to study for promotions and made some upward movement. I was finally able to gain some higher education seventeen years after my first born which helped me gain some more upward bound momentum. At this point in my career, there is no further upward movement in my current role. Receiving this scholarship will help me achieve my dreams of a graduate degree which will then help open doors to executive positions within my corporation. I know that I have more to offer. I believe in lifting each other up. Being in an executive position will allow me to put into practice the strategies that I will gain in a MBA program so that the front line staff and the corporate goals align. I have to take loans out to pay for my school. Gaining the opportunity to utilize this scholarship will greatly ease the financial burden on my family as a result of my educational and career goals. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from the committee.

I am worth the dreams that I aspire to achieve because I believe I can achieve greatness, so, I will. I am one of seven children born to immigrants to this country. My father went to school until third grade and my mother was sent to work as a house cleaner and servant by the time she was six years old. Mother still cannot read or write. I knew from an early age, around seven years old, that we would be the interpreters, application filling, and representatives of our parents. Because of our precarious and uncertain economic station in life, my brothers and I knew that the only way to survive was to work and help pay for bills, food, and clothes. I was bussed to a public school where my classmates were the children of prominent business owners, the district superintendent, judges, etc... Meanwhile, I wore the same clothes as my brothers and had one bra that mom bought for me at the second hand store. I did not fit in with my peers in terms of fashion, sports, or social events. I had missing and crooked teeth. Wild curly hair that I brushed out every day, and I dressed like a "boy". The only way I felt that I earned respect was by using my brain. I was in constant competition in middle school and usually won. As a freshman, I started to work six days a week resulting in constant truancy. I ended up dropping out, getting pregnant as a teenager, and getting the lead out by going back to high school to graduate with my son in the crowd. It's been a long road for me. As a forty-eight year old, I am still aspiring to achieve my dreams of higher education. I obtained my bachelor's degree in 2024 and I am ready to move forward with my graduate degree. I have pulled myself up by my bootstraps since I was a child. I will continue to do so as I enter the middle stage of my life. I plan on continuing to model perseverance and resilience to my children. I hope that their experience of watching me work full time and attend school full time shows them that anyone can achieve their dreams as long as they work for it. I am working for it. Being granted the opportunity to help pay for my degree by This Woman's Worth Scholarship will be a great honor for me. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from the committee.

I became a parent at the age of eighteen. I had dropped out of school to work and help support my parents and siblings. Once I found out I was destined to be a teenage mother, I went back to high school and graduated when many thought I wouldn't. Motherhood helped me realize that I needed to be educated to provide a good life for my child. My journey to higher education met many detours, however. I went to work full time right after high school graduation in order to obtain health insurance for my son. My son's father was an abusive partner, but, in my naive youth, I felt that I was in love and that he never meant to hurt me. I married him and had three more children. I went to work for my local government and found that there were opportunities for me if I used my brain to move up in the organization. All the while, though, I always yearned to go to college. I was a gifted student through my freshman year of high school and I had dreamed of being the first in my family to go away to college. I started taking one or two classes a semester so that I could make myself a more attractive fit for job openings while balancing being a full time employed wife and mother. It took some time, but, I was able to put myself through community college and I graduated with my second Associates Degree in Fire Science Technology at the same time that my first born graduated high school. I knew that studying at the kitchen table while my children did their homework at the same time was cementing how important education is in one's life. I took a break from school when I gathered the courage to leave my abusive husband. He prophesied that our children and I would be homeless and destitute without him. I knew that I would do all I could to make it. Today, I am happily remarried. Now is the time to continue my education and to set an example for my youngest child as I did for my older children that education is an important part of life. I want her to grow up knowing that her mother persevered in spite of a divorce and that she continued to follow her dream to get her college education. I will be able to utilize my higher education to continue to move up in my organization and in turn help my children fulfill their dreams for a college education.

I believe life itself is an act of beautiful creativity whether it is through the lens of religion or the lens of science. I was in an abusive marriage for most of my life and I had to find creative ways to survive every day. Some examples this creativity were spending countless hours planting and cultivating a home vegetable garden, spending afternoons in the outdoors with my children in tow, and spending my evenings journaling my thoughts away from the abuser. When I finally gathered the courage to leave the abusive marriage with my children, I had to get creative with my salary and budget to afford the split. My ex-husband made it clear at the time that I would never survive without him and I knew that I would make it work. Today, I am happily remarried and I use creativity every day to keep our marriage happy and healthy by creating new exercise routines for us, finding ways to spend quality time together, and hosting functions where our children and extended family can come together to grow. My job involves firm code interpretation that sometimes results in hard lines and frustrations for all parties involved. I use creativity in finding solutions to issues that meet the intent of the code while working with affected parties to alleviate costs, burdens, and overhead. I also have to be creative in creating content for educational programs for the community such as safety talks, videos, and presentations. I utilize this content for senior citizens, children, Spanish speaking citizens, as well as refugees from various countries. By having the gift of waking daily to find creative ways to improve another's day, helps make life beautiful. I know I enjoy using my heart and brain to make the world better every day.