Before I understood construction management, I understood what it meant to make a place livable. My parents bought a farm with no running water, a coal stove for heat, and a barn on the verge of collapse. They rehabilitated it while building a manufacturing business. Watching them, I learned that a vision becomes useful through patient, practical work. Because my father was blind, I also learned to understand the machinery around us: Bridgeport mills, lathes, molding machines, and filling and wrapping stations. Repairing equipment and understanding how a workspace functioned were part of growing up. So was recognizing that people navigate the same environment differently. Those lessons followed me into twenty-five years of facilities and project work in higher education. I began as an administrative assistant sent to inspect a residence hall and grew into responsibilities spanning facility resets and multimillion-dollar renovation, restoration, and conservation projects domestically and abroad. Construction taught me to listen, coordinate, and persist. Abroad, I helped establish operations to rehabilitate centuries-old buildings in Lacoste, France; served as chief administrator on a Grade II* listed English property; and helped lay the operational groundwork for converting a former government building in Hong Kong. Each required understanding different cultures, working practices, and permitting systems while building trust with skilled craftspeople. Some lessons were wonderfully specific. In France, I arranged fifty gallons of custom paint without computerized color matching and with limited French, while sourcing traditional textiles and ceramics to preserve local aesthetics. In England, I helped rewire living quarters as an apprentice, learned roofing systems and lead flashing, and supervised window rebuilding to heritage specifications at the local coffin builders’ workshop. My manufacturing background helped me anticipate equipment clearances, electrical needs, and maintenance access for academic workshops, kitchens, and laboratories in Savannah and Atlanta. Eventually, my farm upbringing brought another unexpected assignment: helping establish an institutional farm. Today, as a nontraditional graduate student studying digital media design and integrative health sciences, I bring that experience to a new purpose. My education helps me consider how technology, sustainable infrastructure, and health knowledge can inform the spaces we build and rehabilitate. I want to help create places of healing and supportive living for women, children, and older adults, particularly people with physical impairments. That means asking practical questions early: Can someone enter independently? Can a parent maneuver a stroller beside a mobility aid? Are information systems understandable? Can lighting, materials, ventilation, and spatial planning support comfort while keeping buildings affordable to operate and maintain? I hope to explore these questions with architects, tradespeople, clinicians, and the people using each space. Adaptive reuse especially interests me: an old rural depot could become a welcoming community health resource, preserving local character while gaining accessible facilities, efficient systems, and connections to care. This scholarship would help cover tuition and course materials as I connect my education with these goals and work toward WELL AP and Certified Wellness Professional credentials. As a single parent returning to graduate study in middle age, that support would ease the financial pressure of preparing for my next professional chapter. My parents taught me to see what a neglected property could become. Craftspeople across three continents taught me how to move a vision toward completion. My education is helping me ask what that completed space can make possible for someone else. I want to build places where receiving care, living comfortably, and maintaining independence are considered from the first drawing.

More Than Hours: A Lifetime of Showing Up My mother taught me two principles: give more than you take, and leave things better than you found them. Those lessons became a practice that has shaped decades of service in Savannah, Georgia. I have contributed more than 5,000 hours through AmeriCorps, beyond my volunteer commitments to church, schools, youth organizations - like Girl Scouts and Future Farmers of America, food delivery, and the Savannah Tree Foundation. Yet hours cannot fully describe what service means. Its value lives in relationships, in whether people feel supported, and in what a community can continue accomplishing after a volunteer’s assignment ends. Through AmeriCorps VISTA at Forsyth Farmers’ Market, I help strengthen the connections among local agriculture, food access, and community health. My work includes grant applications, fundraising, communications, volunteer support, and outreach for programs that help neighbors obtain fresh food. I have led five fundraising campaigns that have collectively raised more than $30,000. Those dollars create opportunities to support local farmers and producers, and also sustain the programs our neighbors depend on. One program particularly close to my heart is the 912 Food Farmacy, which helps participants access fresh produce. I am helping develop plans that connect that access with practical cooking education, recipes, and opportunities to gather and learn. As a Community Health Worker studying nutrition and integrative health, I want people to have both nourishing food and the confidence to use it in ways that fit their lives. My service also extends into the quieter spaces where people need someone dependable. I help young people prepare their first résumés, navigate educational applications, and recognize the skills they already possess. Supporting a teenager through an unfamiliar process may never produce a public milestone, but it can change what that young person believes is possible. I understand the importance of such support because I have needed it myself. When the pandemic upended my career, AmeriCorps became a lifeline: a way to contribute my professional experience while developing a new direction in community health. I brought decades of design, communication, and organizational experience. Through service, I discovered how those skills could support a future in health care. That experience is why I feel compelled to speak about preserving national service. VISTA began serving communities in 1965 through the War on Poverty, long before it became part of AmeriCorps. Its lack of an upper age limit recognizes that Americans can contribute throughout their lives. Young adults bring energy and emerging skills; older adults bring experience, perspective, and relationships. Communities benefit when both have a place to serve. The current administration’s efforts to dismantle AmeriCorps put that shared opportunity at risk. I have seen what this work makes possible. Without that support, local organizations must stretch further, neighbors face additional barriers, and people seeking a purposeful new beginning lose a pathway I was fortunate to find. My commitment will continue beyond my service term. I am preparing for nursing education so I can build upon my community work with clinical skills, particularly in service to women and older adults. My mother’s lessons still guide me. Wherever I serve next, I intend to leave stronger connections, greater possibilities, and more people equipped to help one another.

A Lifetime of Learning, a Future of Care My father’s life with diabetes began long before mine began. According to our family’s account, his pancreas failed after a bout of German measles in the mid-1940s. Diabetes became a lifelong responsibility. His experience helped me understand that chronic illness accompanies a person into every meal, family gathering, and ordinary day. Years later, following the birth of my daughter and the miscarriage of my twins, I experienced autoimmune dysfunction and spent years under an endocrinologist’s care. More recently, signs of metabolic dysfunction have brought new concerns. These experiences have deepened my empathy for people navigating uncertainty about their bodies, especially women approaching menopause, while continuing to care for their families and meet everyday responsibilities. Today, I am pursuing graduate education in integrative health and preparing for nursing education, with the goal of becoming a nurse practitioner. I want to combine clinical preparation with sustainable nutrition and careful evaluation of complementary approaches to support people living with diabetes and chronic autoimmune conditions. That work has already begun through my service as a Community Health Worker (CHW) and my involvement with Forsyth Farmers’ Market’s 912 Food Farmacy. I work with people, including adults managing diabetes, as they learn to incorporate more fresh food into their meals. Our conversations involve colors, tastes, textures, budgets, and the practical question of what someone will actually enjoy eating. People want meals that support their health without losing the pleasure of eating. They are not asking too much. Meeting that need requires creativity and cultural humility. A familiar dish may carry memories of a parent, express religious belonging, or connect someone to a homeland. I want to learn how different communities grow, prepare, season, and share food so that my guidance respects those connections. I also want to understand what is possible when someone has limited transportation, an unpredictable income, fatigue, or difficulty standing at a stove. As a nurse, I plan to develop practical nutrition education alongside appropriate medical treatment: affordable recipes, cooking demonstrations, accessible shopping guides, and opportunities for patients to share what works in their own kitchens. For people with autoimmune conditions, I will consider individual symptoms, prescribed therapies, dietary restrictions, and the demands of daily disease management. My interest in complementary approaches carries a responsibility to evaluate evidence, recognize medication interactions, and collaborate with other clinicians. I also want to strengthen the connections between healthcare and community food resources. Advice becomes more useful when a patient can afford the ingredients, reach a market, and prepare the meal. Partnerships with farmers, community organizations, and healthcare teams can help turn recommendations into realistic choices. I came to college later, after building a successful career through continual learning and a commitment to doing my work well. That experience gave me the confidence to pursue formal education while navigating learning differences and raising my daughter. My community work has given that education a clear purpose: becoming a clinician who listens carefully, translates complex health information, and helps people put it to use. I envision another twenty-five years of service, bringing together scientific curiosity, practical experience, and the relationships I have built in my community. Scholarship support would help me obtain the clinical preparation to fulfill that commitment. My father’s experience showed me the persistence chronic illness demands. I want to meet that persistence with knowledgeable, compassionate care. I want to bring both lessons into nursing, helping people of every age manage their health while preserving the foods, relationships, and traditions that make their lives their own.

The BOLD Woman’s Guide to Growing in STEM I already make a difference in STEM. My classroom extends well beyond the classroom and textbooks, into the field, on a construction site, at a farmers’ market, or in community cooking classes. My tools have expanded from construction drawings to code, but my purpose remains the same: learn how systems work, understand who they leave behind, and help build something better. During twenty-five years in art and design higher education, my responsibilities brought me into construction trades where I had to learn the language and establish a reputation for being knowledgeable, clearheaded, and strong. Sometimes, being a woman on the job meant retreating to a portable toilet to cry or pump breast milk, then returning to work. Those experiences taught me how much determination women expend just to secure the conditions to contribute. When COVID disrupted my career, I returned to school and completed my bachelor’s degree. Finding work that paid a living wage as a mature woman raising a young child proved difficult. Through Step Up Savannah, I found training, encouragement, and an AmeriCorps opportunity. I also found the courage to pursue graduate education in digital media design, studying computer science, information technology, and now creative AI—a direction that would have made my father jump for joy. I expected to study information systems and management. I did not expect to become a coder. Today, I design systems and write the code that makes them function. I chose this path because technology gives me another way to turn observation, creativity, and persistence into practical solutions. As an AmeriCorps VISTA with Forsyth Farmers’ Market, I bring those skills into our local food system. Video editing and social media may sound ordinary until you consider the farmer working from sunrise to sunset whose online presence consists of a blurry flock photograph. I have worked alongside farmers as they became confident sharing their harvests, explaining their practices, and inviting customers into their work. That progress grows through relationships: weekly conversations, recording and editing videos, preparing newsletters, sharing vendors’ messages, and showing up at Saturday markets. Technical knowledge becomes useful when someone feels comfortable enough to use it. Helping a farmer communicate directly with customers strengthens both a small business and the community’s understanding of its food supply. As I conclude my service, I plan to continue with the market, leading the 912 Food Farmacy program in 2027, connecting technology with nutrition education and community health. Alongside my graduate health studies and future nursing education, I want to help participants use phones and smartwatches to document food choices and health patterns while understanding privacy, consent, and data security. I also plan to use digital tools to adapt recipes for different nutritional needs and present more video content to make instructions easier to follow. Young volunteers will help create videos, edit educational materials, and explore AI thoughtfully. I want them to learn to question outputs, recognize bias, protect personal information, and understand whose experiences are missing from the data. As a woman in STEM, I bring experience earned across disciplines, workplaces, and caregiving responsibilities. I know what it means to learn a new language while proving you belong in the room. My ambition is to make that room more accessible—and equip other people to build what their communities need.

Called to Care: Faith, Family, and Community Mental Health Mental health is my why. It is why I changed careers in a way I hadn’t anticipated, why I became a Community Health Worker, and why I am preparing to become a nurse. Before it became part of my professional education, it was part of my daily life as a mother. My child’s evolving mental health needs have required me to keep learning while living with uncertainty. An initial diagnosis of ADHD with oppositional defiant disorder expanded to include disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, with bipolar disorder now under consideration. Each transition has required renewed advocacy, difficult conversations, and adjustments to how I parent. Eventually, my child’s disability necessitated a change in my career path. As a parent, I have had to learn how to advocate while still leaving room for questions. A diagnosis can help explain a child’s needs, but it cannot capture everything about the person you love. I want my child to have opportunities to learn, build relationships, and imagine a future. That desire shapes how I approach others: I want to understand their hopes and their difficulties. These experiences have shaped my relationships by teaching me to listen beyond behavior and recognize the distress that may lie beneath it. I know the strain of supporting others while grieving a family member’s death and experiencing depression. I also know how frightening it is when someone you care for rejects conventional treatment and trusts self-directed approaches that do not appear to be helping. Loving someone does not give us the power to make their decisions. It asks us to practice patience, maintain boundaries, and remain available without pretending we have every answer. Caregiving has also made me more aware of the person who appears to be holding everything together. Parents and other caregivers can become so focused on appointments, responsibilities, and immediate concerns that they struggle to express their own needs. My experiences remind me to ask how they are doing, too. I understand why someone might need practical assistance before they have the energy to explain what they are carrying emotionally. My spiritual beliefs give that availability meaning. I believe faith and spirituality have a place in medicine, alongside evidence-based care and respect for each person’s beliefs. During my bachelor’s studies, I explored religion in peacebuilding, end-of-life care, and advanced meditation philosophy and practices in the medical arts. I am now pursuing chaplaincy studies, including specific instruction in mental and behavioral health, to deepen my ability to accompany people through uncertainty, suffering, and loss. For me, spiritual care begins with listening. It requires humility about what comforts and matters to another person. Someone may welcome prayer, need space to express anger or doubt, or simply want someone to stay present. I want to be prepared to honor those differences. My faith calls me to serve without making someone’s access to compassion dependent on whether they share my beliefs. As a Community Health Worker, I put these beliefs into practice. My path into mental health is through community-based support: recognizing distress, building trust, and helping people reach appropriate care. I have completed four distinct trauma-informed mental health trainings and am working to complete two others. My preparation includes adult and youth trauma, de-escalation, and advanced youth resilience training. This ongoing education helps me approach difficult encounters with greater awareness of how past experiences can influence someone’s response to help. I have also received training related to mental health and substance use, am certified in naloxone administration, and carry kits with me. Being prepared matters to me because compassion must be accompanied by the ability to respond appropriately. I recognize the boundaries of my role and the importance of connecting people with qualified professionals. I want to be someone who recognizes a need and helps make the next step possible. Georgia-provided training has prepared me to help people navigate mental and behavioral health services, including service referrals and assistance with Medicaid and SNAP applications. Access to food and health coverage can be essential to a person’s ability to pursue treatment. My work at Forsyth Farmers’ Market keeps these practical concerns close to my understanding of health. Through community food access work, I see why care must take account of the circumstances in which people live. My current sexuality education coursework addresses helping people, particularly young people, with mental and behavioral health conditions practice safer sex, recognize abuse, and understand their choices. I value this preparation because dignity includes the ability to ask questions, understand boundaries, and participate in decisions about one’s own body and relationships. Recently, I also completed AgriSafe coursework on farmer and farmworker mental health and suicide prevention, knowledge directly relevant to the agricultural community I serve. Together, these experiences have given my career goals a clear direction. I am completing a master’s in integrative health sciences with a focus on nutrition and plan to enter an accelerated bachelor’s nursing program to become a registered nurse. I want to bring an understanding of mental health, nourishment, family circumstances, and spiritual needs into nursing care. Further clinical education will prepare me to assume responsibilities beyond my current community health role. Returning to undergraduate study after graduate education is a deliberate investment in the skills this work requires. I am building a second career while raising a child whose needs helped reveal that calling. The path requires persistence, but it also gives my education immediate purpose. I can connect what I am learning to the questions families face and to the kind of support I have needed myself. My experiences have taught me that compassion becomes useful through preparation and action. They have strengthened my belief that people deserve care that respects both their vulnerability and their agency. They have changed how I listen, how I understand difficult behavior, and how I define service. I cannot promise someone an uncomplicated path to healing. I can listen carefully, recognize when someone needs additional help, and help them take the next step. Whether that means navigating services, offering practical support, or making room for an honest conversation, I want my presence to make seeking help feel more possible. That is the work I feel called to do.

“Community begins with the decision to be available to one another.” That belief guides how I try to live. To me, selflessness means making room for someone else’s needs in an already full life—and staying available after the immediate moment has passed. For the past eight months, I have helped provide weekly produce and farm-fresh food bags to older adults at Telfair Arms in Savannah through my service with Forsyth Farmers’ Market. Over time, those weekly visits have revealed connections I never expected. Several of the people I now serve are people I worked alongside roughly thirty years ago, when I was finding my footing in this community. I was in my late teens and early twenties, working my first jobs before moving into an administrative position. They were already adults with years of work behind them. They cleaned buildings, maintained rooms, laid bricks, and worked food service lines. Their labor helped keep our community running. Decades later, our lives have intersected again, this time around bags of fresh food. Knowing them then and now makes this work especially personal. But every person on our list deserves that same care, whether we share a history or have only just met. Our sign-up list is approaching thirty people. We recently learned that the funder intends to reduce support from weekly to every other week beginning in January, when winter utility bills can place additional pressure on already limited incomes. I am working to raise the additional funds needed to maintain consistent weekly food bags. That effort is still underway. For me, perseverance means continuing to make the case for these neighbors even when resources are uncertain. As a single mother, student, and AmeriCorps VISTA, I understand the strain of stretching limited resources. I cannot personally cover every shortfall. I can contribute my time, listen carefully, write funding appeals, and help others understand why this matters. My education in integrative health sciences strengthens my commitment to making nourishing food and practical health education more accessible. Relationships sustain that commitment. Returning each week lets me listen, recognize people, and understand needs a sign-up sheet cannot convey. It also gives my neighbors reason to expect that someone will keep showing up. I do not think of selflessness as a title I can claim. It is a practice I must keep choosing. At Telfair, that choice means honoring the people whose work helped sustain the community I call home—and doing what I can to help that community sustain them.

Sixteen years ago, becoming a mother changed nearly everything about my life. At the time, I had a successful career and far greater control over the environment in which my daughter and I lived. I could decide what food came into our home, arrange childcare, and provide many of the things she needed. I understood parenting would require sacrifice, but I could not have anticipated how dramatically the work of parenting would change as she grew—or how much becoming a single parent, returning to school, a pandemic, and years of economic uncertainty would reshape both our lives. Today, one of the most challenging parts of being a student and a single parent is that neither role waits for the other. My coursework still has deadlines when my daughter needs medical care. I still have to complete research and homework when she is struggling academically or emotionally. Tuition, books, transportation, groceries, utilities, and healthcare all compete for the same limited resources. Sometimes studying means waking before everyone else. Sometimes it means working after midnight. Sometimes it means closing the laptop because being her mother comes first. And at sixteen, she needs me differently than she did at six. I once had almost complete control over her nutrition. Now I am learning how to care for a teenager who has experienced malnutrition while living within the landscape of the modern American diet. I have advocated for her educational needs while watching her develop confidence as a learner. I have learned when to intervene, when to listen, and when to give her enough room to begin making decisions for herself. Those experiences have also changed the direction of my education. I initially pursued nutrition because I wanted to contribute to the growing need for healthier, more sustainable food systems. Through my studies and community service, however, I began seeing something larger. Women and children often encounter overlapping structural barriers to nutrition, healthcare, and education. Food insecurity is inseparable from maternal health. A child's health cannot be separated from a parent's resources. Educational opportunity cannot be separated from whether a family has enough food, transportation, healthcare, time, or money. My education has therefore continued to evolve toward healthcare and community health, particularly maternal, infant, and family care. I want the knowledge and credentials to do more than recognize inequity. I want to be qualified to intervene. Motherhood has also taught me that caring for one child inevitably introduces you to the needs of many others. As my daughter and her friends move from adolescence toward adulthood, I maintain an open door. I want our home to be a quiet harbor where a young person can ask a difficult question without feeling embarrassed, find a warm meal without having to explain why they are hungry, receive guidance without judgment, or have a safe place to sleep when necessary. Their generation is navigating realities I desperately wish were not ordinary parts of adolescence: accidental overdoses from contaminated substances, vaping, teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, incarceration of parents and peers, bullying, racial profiling, immigration uncertainty, and the deaths of people far too young to die. Many are growing up in single-parent households or families that have suddenly become single-parent households through circumstances other than divorce. Watching them has reinforced why finishing my education matters. I want these young people to enter adulthood understanding that community is something we build for one another. I want them to recognize that friendship can become a lifelong network of support and that asking for help is not a failure of independence. Someday, if they choose to become parents themselves, I want them to enter that chapter feeling informed, capable, supported, and confident. That begins with what I model for my own daughter. This scholarship would help by relieving some of the financial pressure that continually competes with my education. It would give me more capacity to focus on coursework, research, and the professional training needed for the next stage of my career, rather than constantly calculating what must be postponed, reduced, or sacrificed to make everything fit. More importantly, it would help me finish what my daughter has watched me work toward for years. When I first returned to school, I wanted to create a more stable future for the two of us. I still do. But sixteen years of motherhood have expanded my definition of that future. I now understand that helping one family become healthier or more secure can strengthen an entire community. My daughter has grown up watching me study, work, struggle, change direction, ask for help, begin again, and keep going. I hope the lesson she carries into adulthood is not that her mother somehow managed to do everything. I hope she learns something much more useful: we don't have to do everything alone. And when we have the opportunity, we hold the door open for the family or person who is coming behind us.

I had spent decades believing that reliability, education, experience, and hard work created security. Becoming a single mother taught me how quickly that equation changes when the workplace and community structures around you assume that someone else is available to care for your child. Before becoming a single mother, I had spent more than two decades building a successful career. I was accustomed to working hard, adapting quickly, volunteering for what needed to be done, and finding a way forward when circumstances changed. What surprised me was discovering that many of the systems I had depended on were far less flexible when I needed the flexibility. During the pandemic, I watched workplaces discover that jobs we had long been told required rigid schedules could, in fact, be performed remotely and flexibly. Yet access to that flexibility was uneven. After years of accommodating my employers' needs, I found that the flexibility I needed as a parent was much harder to obtain. Later, while seeking work after age 50, a hiring manager told me that it appeared my child required too much of my time and that they needed someone with greater flexibility and energy. I remember the irony. I am Generation X. We learned to show up—whether we felt like it or not, whether life was convenient or not, and sometimes whether the hurricane flags were flying or not. Returning to school presented another surprise. I submitted 123 scholarship applications before I won one, while also drawing on my retirement savings and federal financial aid—with no safety net or guarantee of a job on the other side of graduation. I cannot promise my daughter that hard work will always be rewarded immediately, that institutions will always recognize our circumstances, or that adversity will arrive at a convenient time. What I can show her is what happens next. You apply again. You study harder. You serve again—even when you are tired, anxious, or frustrated. And you show up again. Today, I am in my third term as an AmeriCorps VISTA, working in food systems and community health to help my community overcome poverty and build resilience. As I work toward completing two master's degrees in technology and integrative health sciences, I know this is only the beginning of my second career. My goal is to continue into nursing and advanced clinical training, ultimately serving women and families through healthcare, research, and midwifery. Pursuing higher education while parenting has also changed what being a student looks like for me. There is rarely a clean division between school, work, and home. I have studied after my daughter went to bed, completed assignments around her school schedule, and learned that sometimes being present for her means putting my own work aside and returning to it later. I have also learned to let our education overlap. We talk about what we are learning, work through challenges together, and celebrate each other's progress. In our home, education is not something I disappear to pursue; increasingly, it is something we experience alongside one another. As my daughter works her way through high school and contemplates her own path in life, I realize my greatest hardship as a single mother pursuing higher education is also the reason I refuse to stop: she is watching.

I was one of “those” girls who had to report to the nurse’s office when my first menstrual cycle came. My mother worked and could not pick me up. They gave me oversized underwear, a towel with instructions on how to use it, a spare, and a note sending me back to class. By the end of the day, I was doubled over in pain. I don’t think I ever voluntarily entered the nurse’s office again. For the next 35 years, menstruation meant a bag of tricks: aspirin, prescription hormones, and diagnoses including dysmenorrhea, fibroids, and endometriosis. But another pattern didn't make sense. At times I had extraordinary energy; at others, debilitating anxiety, depression, irritability, and anger. I had ADHD and later mental-health diagnoses, so those symptoms had explanations. My reproductive symptoms had explanations, too. What no one investigated was whether my menstrual cycle was creating a distinct pattern—or exacerbating conditions already present. I was never evaluated for PMDD or PME. My daughter’s experience has shown me why that absence matters. She had been diagnosed with ADHD and DMDD following childhood trauma. After menstruation began, however, another pattern emerged. When multiple threats of suicide led one treatment center to consider bipolar disorder, her psychologist stopped and asked a different question: Were her symptoms following her menstrual cycle? She raised PMDD. A new child and adolescent psychiatrist agreed that bipolar criteria were not established and began considering PMDD in her treatment. Suddenly, I was looking backward at decades of my own medical history while fighting to make sure my daughter’s would be different. That experience changed my life's direction. A woman I called Momma Becky had long encouraged me to use my ability to help others, particularly women, navigate complicated healthcare systems. Before she died of lung cancer, she urged me to become a Community Health Worker. I followed her advice, completing CHW training through Emory University while continuing graduate study in integrative health sciences and research. Today, I work at the intersection of community health, nutrition, research, and technology while pursuing pathways toward dietetics and advanced nursing practice in women’s health. My work has included food-as-medicine programming and developing a maternal-health initiative, and my Harvard technology capstone focuses on creating a resource platform for community health workers supporting maternal health. I now see a concrete opportunity within that work: helping move menstrual-cycle recognition upstream. Community health workers often encounter people before specialists do and help translate symptoms, resources, and healthcare systems into actionable next steps. Existing organizations have developed evidence-based PMDD/PME resources, but I am interested in the next translational question: how can community-based health workers be trained to help those resources reach people earlier and support appropriate entry into clinical care? Ultimately, I want to contribute to women’s health through clinical research as an advanced practitioner and researcher. But meaningful change does not have to wait until then. I think often about the girl who was handed a towel, shown how to manage what was happening to her, and sent back to class. She learned very early that menstrual suffering was something women quietly managed. I want the next girl, the next young woman, who feels something is wrong and has the courage to say so to encounter someone ready to ask the next question—and a healthcare system prepared to understand her answer.

When I read about Annie Pringle, what struck me first was not the cancer, but everything else she was in life: a lactation consultant, breast cancer support group leader, mother, teacher, and advocate. She understood something I have learned across different stages of my own life—that breast health is not one conversation. It encompasses development, body image, sexuality, lactation, nutrition, cancer prevention and treatment, aging, and identity. Yet we often begin those conversations only when something goes wrong. I grew up in a highly religious household where breasts were simply not discussed. As I entered adolescence, silence was replaced not by health education, but by judgment. I was exceptionally underdeveloped and underweight, with fibrocystic breasts and significant asymmetry. In locker rooms and clothing stores, I was teased, mistaken for a boy, and repeatedly reminded that my body did not resemble the culturally accepted image of a woman. No one taught me to understand my breasts as part of my health. At thirty, my first mammogram became another lesson in what inadequate breast-health communication can cost. Despite explaining my history of fibrocystic breasts, I endured three rounds of painful testing, hours of fear and discomfort, and more than $500 in copayments before finally receiving an all-clear. I eventually wrote to hospital leadership, and my costs were refunded, but the experience damaged my trust so profoundly that I never returned for another mammogram. Several years later, after decades of discomfort with my body, I chose breast augmentation. I had once viewed cosmetic surgery as somehow incompatible with self-esteem or female empowerment. Instead, I discovered the importance of allowing people informed autonomy over their own bodies. For me, augmentation corrected significant asymmetry and gave me a confidence I had never experienced. For the first time, even something as ordinary as shopping for a bra felt joyful rather than humiliating. Then breast health changed meaning again. Four and a half years later, I gave birth to my daughter and wanted to breastfeed. I was surprised by how much discouragement I encountered. I was even reminded that I had “paid good money” for my breasts. But I began researching and learned that because my implants were placed beneath the muscle, breastfeeding might remain possible. Lactation consultants helped me understand not only how previous surgery could affect feeding, but how my original breast development, nutrition, and milk production might intersect. After delivery, my daughter struggled to latch. A lactation consultant recognized both my inverted nipples and, eventually, my daughter's tongue-tie. When her weight began dropping and a nurse suggested switching to a bottle, I burst into tears. In that exhausted postpartum moment, I interpreted difficulty feeding as personal failure. It was not. My daughter needed a frenotomy, and I needed knowledgeable people who could explain what was happening without judgment. With a nipple shield, breast pump, nutritional support, herbal tea, determination, and help from people I trusted, I breastfed her for six months. That experience transformed my understanding of lactation. Human milk is our earliest nutrition, yet lactation is often treated as specialized knowledge that parents encounter only after a baby arrives—sometimes during one of the most physically and emotionally vulnerable periods of their lives. Breast health and lactation education should begin much earlier and should be integrated more meaningfully throughout healthcare education. Today, as I pursue graduate education in integrative health sciences and further training in lactation, nutrition, and community health, I want to help close that gap. My interests in personalized nutrition and medicine have taught me to look at the whole person: anatomy and physiology, certainly, but also culture, access, history, identity, trust, finances, and lived experience. That matters because breast-health education is not equally accessible to everyone. Women of color may carry well-founded historical and contemporary distrust of healthcare institutions. LGBTQIA+ and transgender patients may struggle to find providers prepared to discuss their bodies respectfully and knowledgeably. People with breast implants need appropriate information about screening, lactation, aging implants, and long-term care. Men need to know that they, too, can develop breast cancer—and deserve education designed to reach them rather than treating them as an afterthought. I recently asked my teenage daughter whether she knew men could develop breast cancer. “No way,” she said, before thinking for a moment and adding, “Well, they do have breasts, so I guess so.” Her reaction reminded me of my own when I first learned the same fact. Despite decades separating our health education, neither of us had been explicitly taught something so fundamental. That is why I believe breast health belongs in comprehensive health education long before disease, pregnancy, surgery, or crisis requires someone to learn it. Young people should understand breasts not merely through the cultural lens of attractiveness, but as anatomy with functions, variations, health risks, and changes across a lifetime. Patients should be able to ask questions without embarrassment. Providers should have the education to answer them. And no person should believe that difficulty breastfeeding, an unusual breast shape, cancer, reconstruction, augmentation, gender identity, or simply having a different body makes them less worthy of knowledgeable and compassionate care. My own relationship with breast health has changed from adolescence, to adulthood, to motherhood, and now into menopause. At every stage, education—or its absence—has shaped my choices. As a Community Health Worker, I can begin making that knowledge more accessible now. My current graduate studies in integrative health and technology are helping me develop better ways to translate evidence into practical resources people can use to understand their health and make informed decisions. As I continue toward lactation practice and, ultimately, advanced nursing practice, I hope to extend that work from education and health coaching into compassionate clinical care when it is needed. Annie Pringle's legacy demonstrates that breast health can encompass education, lactation, advocacy, cancer support, and human connection all at once. I hope to carry that same understanding forward: that when we give people accurate information about their bodies, we give them something larger than knowledge. We give them agency.

MY TIME to BLOOM “Cause I am more than what I am to you.” I first heard Olivia Rodrigo sing “The Rose Song” while my daughter watched "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series". She was perhaps a little too young for it, and I was certainly older than its intended audience. I studied nearby, listening with one ear. Yet its lyrics would eventually resonate with a journey that began long before either of us was born. I married my high-school sweetheart young. Although I had a language-based learning disability, my neurodivergence also gave me strengths that helped me graduate nearly two years early, a full two years ahead of him, and begin dual enrollment at a community college. I dreamed of continuing my education, but my family could not afford it. When my boyfriend left for college, I followed. I worked while he studied. I paid our bills, helped with homework and projects, supported his activities, and gradually adopted his preferences as my own—his music, movies, social life, even the way he wanted me to dress. There were no flowers. We never took vacations or had a honeymoon. I put my ambitions aside because I believed we were building our future together. Within two years of his completing his master’s degree, we were divorcing. It took nearly a decade to find my financial footing, courage, and voice—and return to school. Five years later, I fell in love again, only to discover painfully familiar patterns. This time, however, I had a daughter watching. Both relationships taught me how easily love can become confinement when one person’s identity is expected to disappear inside another’s. My quiet, contemplative nature was treated as unhappiness. My desire for libraries, museums, gardens, learning, and solitude was difficult for my partners to understand. They both monitored my communications, restricted my activities, and sometimes destroyed my belongings. Education, experimentation, and creative expression were repeatedly discouraged. In some ways, I had been prepared for this. Growing up, my father loved me and wanted me safe, but believed security came through becoming a good wife. Even my interests could be edited: liking the wrong music or science fiction, I was warned, might make me unpopular. I learned early to fit myself inside other people’s expectations. Rodrigo’s rose gave me another metaphor. “You watched me wither, and now you watch me bloom.” I did not simply shatter the glass others placed around me. I planted a garden beyond it. I built a career. When COVID disrupted that career, I began again. I returned to college and graduated with my bachelor's degree. I found a job and pursued graduate education, community health, research, and service, moving beyond both the limitations others imagined for me and those created by my learning disabilities. Most importantly, I have tried to show my daughter something different: a woman does not have to become smaller to be loved. My life has not unfolded according to the conventional timeline I once thought I had to follow. Blooming has required tending. There have been thorns, difficult seasons, losses, and repeated transplanting. But the rose survived. Today, I no longer live by someone else’s point of view or wait for a court of approval to decide what I may become. I am still learning, still growing, and still reaching toward possibilities I once surrendered. After all these years, it is finally my time to bloom.

Hurricane Matthew struck Savannah only three days after I underwent surgery. We spent fourteen days without power, surrounded by downed trees and storm damage, while I cared for my six-year-old daughter and tried to recover. I knew I was sick, but in the chaos following the hurricane, I did not understand how sick. My sister flew down because I could barely walk, much less manage the damage to my home. When she had to return to her own children and job, my best friend came from Atlanta to help. Both were alarmed by my weakness, abdominal swelling, and discoloration around my surgical sites. I remained in contact with my surgeon's office, despite storm-related closures, and received additional antibiotics. When my surgeon was finally able to examine me, he immediately sent me to the emergency room. I expected another surgery. I did not expect to wake up two days later. My discharge paperwork documented a vaginal cuff revision. Still, the pathology report revealed the larger story: an E. coli infection had spread from the surgical site, and I had developed sepsis. What I had interpreted as an unusually difficult postoperative recovery had become a potentially life-threatening infection during a natural disaster that disrupted medical care, transportation, electricity, and nearly every support system normally available to a recovering patient. My recovery took more than three months, but some problems never completely resolved. Soon afterward, I developed dizziness, balance difficulties, sensitivity to light and sound, and migraines. In 2017, I was diagnosed with vestibular dysfunction. Treatment options have remained limited by insurance coverage and cost. Nearly a decade later, after returning to school and beginning healthcare studies, I used my own medical records to practice understanding an actual clinical case. There I rediscovered something I had barely processed while recovering: during treatment for sepsis, I had received gentamicin, an aminoglycoside antibiotic associated with vestibular toxicity. Further research gave my physicians and me a medically plausible avenue to investigate symptoms that appeared only after my hospitalization, although their cause cannot now be established with certainty. That discovery changed how I understood my experience with sepsis—and healthcare itself. Following COVID-19, I lost the career I had built over twenty-five years and returned to school. Through AmeriCorps VISTA service, I became a certified community health worker and began working in nutrition and community health. That experience ultimately led me toward further healthcare study and a growing commitment to improving care, particularly for women and underserved communities. Sepsis taught me that surviving a medical emergency is not necessarily the end of its story. Disasters, access to care, medication effects, insurance limitations, follow-up care, and whether someone has an advocate beside them can shape recovery for years afterward. Nearly a decade later, I am still learning from what happened to me. This time, however, I am learning not only as the patient who survived sepsis, but as a student determined to understand it—and to use that understanding to better advocate for others.

Elegance in the Equation I grew up afraid of math. As a neurodivergent child with dyslexia and dyscalculia in the 1980s, I struggled with classroom mathematics. I failed Algebra and later failed the mathematics portion of my high school graduation test. After months in remedial math, I was told I did not have what it took to go to college. There was just one problem with that conclusion: I was already using math everywhere else. My grandmother taught me by counting money. My father built a computer from a kit and coded a trebuchet game for me. I could not reliably manipulate fractions on paper, but I could distinguish a 3/8-inch socket from a 3/16-inch socket by sight. I could read calipers, measure materials in my father's workshop, adjust his ham radio, draw his insulin correctly, track auction bids, run payroll or track inventory for my mother in the family business, and report the stock ticker. I earned B+ grades in honors chemistry and physics. Somehow, none of this registered to me as being "good at math." Years later, I counseled and encouraged a colleague who feared his required college math course. I pointed out all the mathematics he already used—calculating labor hours, floor area, inventory, fuel, and mileage. Then he asked why I had never finished college. "The math," I told him. He looked at me and said, essentially, "They were wrong." He was right. Eventually, I went to college and graduated from Harvard. Today I am completing a master's degree in IT and coding, and I work with mathematics regularly while also preparing for a transition into healthcare. Most importantly, I am teaching my high-school-aged daughter, who struggles with some of the same concepts I did, that mathematics is not a test of whether she belongs. I teach her to approach math as a language. Numbers, symbols, measurements, and equations describe relationships—sometimes like prose, sometimes like poetry. That is why I love math. I found it in gardens and workshops, architecture and aviation, budgets and computer code, in patterns all around me, long before I recognized its name. Mathematics was never the "thing" I could not do. It was a language I had been speaking all along.

Why Calculus is Crucial in the STEM Field I was terrified when I first encountered the calculus placement exam as part of my entry to Harvard University. As a non-traditional student with dyslexia and a history of struggling with math, facing calculus—a subject I had never studied—was daunting. I feared that my performance might jeopardize my application. To my amazement, despite my lack of formal experience, I passed through. This experience began my journey into a field where calculus is invaluable. Calculus: The Foundation of Modern STEM Disciplines Calculus is fundamental in STEM for several reasons. It provides a framework for understanding and solving complex problems in science, engineering, economics, and technology. At its core, calculus is the study of change and motion, encapsulated through derivatives and integrals. These concepts model real-world phenomena and develop innovative solutions. Calculus is crucial for designing everything from bridges to spacecraft. Engineers use it to calculate forces, predict how structures respond to stresses, and optimize designs for safety and efficiency. Architects use calculus to create complex, aesthetically pleasing, and structurally sound structures. Meteorologists use calculus to predict weather patterns by analyzing atmospheric data. Differential equations, a branch of calculus, model interactions between air masses, temperature, and pressure, essential for accurate predictions. Calculus in Modern Technology and Machine Learning As a Digital Media Design (ALM, Harvard) and Applied Nutrition (MSc, UNE) student, I find calculus indispensable. It derives formulas for machine learning algorithms, such as vector machines, decision trees, and neural networks. These algorithms use calculus to optimize functions, determine the best model parameters, and minimize errors. In my Python and AI courses, I applied calculus principles to create algorithms for a 'fruit ripeness' testing tool using color analysis. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) use calculus to find the optimal hyperplane that separates data points into classes. Decision trees make decisions based on the likelihood of outcomes, and neural networks use calculus for backpropagation—a method for adjusting weights to improve accuracy. In my self-study of Wolfram Language, I applied calculus to solve differential equations and perform complex computations. These skills are essential for creating tools to address global challenges, such as sustainable urban food systems or envisioning food cultivation on the moon. Calculus and My Future Aspirations Looking ahead, I see numerous opportunities where calculus will be critical. In robotics and agro-tech, calculus will be essential for designing and optimizing robots for agricultural tasks. Calculus-based models can develop efficient planting strategies, manage resources, and analyze crop yields. Moreover, calculus will be crucial as I explore ambitious projects like building the first food cultivation installation on the moon. Such endeavors will require advanced mathematical models to address gravity, resource management, and sustainability challenges. Conclusion My journey from fearing calculus to using it as a tool in my studies has been transformative. Calculus, often perceived as challenging, is a gateway to understanding and solving some of the most pressing problems in STEM. From engineering marvels to machine learning algorithms, calculus underpins applications that drive innovation and progress. Through my experiences and future aspirations, I appreciate how calculus facilitates technological advancements and helps us make sense of the world. As I continue my academic and professional journey, I am excited to explore how calculus can be applied to create solutions that contribute to a sustainable and healthy future for all.

Balancing the Demands of Being a Student and a Single Parent The most challenging aspect of juggling life as a student and a single parent has been finding the balance between my academic responsibilities and my role as a caregiver. As a full-time student pursuing dual degrees while raising my daughter, I face the constant challenge of managing time effectively and maintaining my focus amidst various demands. I want to be able to support my daughter and show up for her, have fun and make memories. From working full-time, managing a household, and caring for my daughter through her medical and educational needs, to navigating personal hardships like domestic violence, health issues, and financial instability, I have had to find creative solutions to stay on track with my studies. This means that I often need to wake up early, stay up late, and even set aside "fun" activities to complete class projects and make the grade. Balancing these responsibilities has required immense persistence and resilience, as well as creativity, negotiation, and patience. There have been moments when the weight of these responsibilities felt overwhelming, yet these challenges have also strengthened my resolve and fueled my determination to succeed. This scholarship represents a crucial opportunity to ease some of these burdens. With the support it provides, I would be able to allocate more time to my studies, engage more deeply in my coursework, travel to campus to conduct research, and work more closely with my professors and peers. Additionally, it would allow me to explore new opportunities for professional growth and participate in enriching academic experiences that would otherwise be out of reach due to financial constraints. More importantly, this scholarship will help me pave the way for a brighter future for my daughter and me. By achieving my academic and career goals, I hope to set a powerful example of perseverance and determination for her. She struggles with many of the same learning difficulties I did at her age, and school can often be a very scary and challenging place for her. I want to show her that through hard work, dedication, and unwavering belief in ourselves, we can overcome obstacles and achieve our dreams, no matter how daunting they may seem. I am also seeking to model for her good time management and goal setting, the understanding that she can change her mind about career and degree fields, and know that she can continue her educational journey as long and as far as her mind can see. In essence, this scholarship is not just an investment in my education but also in our future. It is a chance for us to build a foundation for success, create a legacy of resilience, and open doors to new possibilities that will benefit us both. It will help us to move forward from our past struggles and towards a future full of hope and opportunity. Thank you for considering my application and for supporting students like me who strive to balance their personal and academic aspirations while facing significant challenges.

Slow and steady wins the race. This was the advice I was given as a student in the 3rd grade while navigating my learning disability. School was always challenging. Yet a dedicated Latin teacher in high school encouraged me to continue to community college following graduation. This would be the first of four universities I would attend over the next 35 years, always falling short of a degree. A few years after my daughter was born, I had to separate from her father. When our relationship began, I was not aware that he was masking a mental health condition with drugs and alcohol. My daughter and I live under a permanent protective order and she receives no child support. Within a year of the separation, the institution where I worked for 20 years had a policy change due to accreditation updates. My qualifications and time equivalency did not equal a bachelor degree for the position I held. I needed a degree and the requirement was non-negotiable, placing my employment in a precarious position. A fortuitous and unexpected call from my academic advisor at Harvard changed my trajectory. Before my daughter was born, I took a few business courses at Harvard University through the extension school. While the courses were challenging, I achieved high scores. Yet, life had moved forward and I did not continue my enrollment. However, I still qualified for admission. With my advisor's encouragement, I applied and was accepted as a degree seeking student in the fall of 2017. I worked while pursuing my degree. I also continued to take on roles of progressive responsibility, even though my employer did not make accommodations for or fund my studies. The courses I take at Harvard are dense, the rigor and expectations being very high. I do not have academic support for my learning challenges. I utilize technology to help me better manage reading, hearing, and focus issues. I continue to work hard and have earned a place on the Dean's Honor Roll. When COVID-19 closures occurred in spring 2020, I worked from home. I successfully managed my work responsibilities and studies. In September 2020, my employer required a return to the office and did not offer flexible work options. This changed my life. My child has a compromised immune system and is to young to qualify for vaccination. Complicating matters, my daughter's school was virtual. She also has a processing disorder and social/emotional challenges, and I became a school paraprofessional at home to ensure her successful completion of the academic year. My only option was to resign my position. I never thought it would take me 35 years to achieve my degree, or that I would need to start my career over again. Yet, for all the challenges and uncertainty, I am now in the finishing stretch of my degree program. I need this scholarship to help me overcome funding issues associated with financial losses incurred due to the pandemic. Thank you for the opportunity to apply.