WNBA's Inspiring Women Scholarship Recipients Share Their Goals for the Future
July 17, 2010NEW YORK – At the WNBA’s Fifth Annual Inspiring Women Luncheon at Gotham Hall on Wednesday, Jeanni Johnson and Jordana Vasquez were introduced as the first-ever recipients of the WNBA and Bacardi USA, Inc. Inspiring Women Scholarship Awards, each worth $15,000.
Johnson and Vasquez, both currently from New Jersey, were already honorees of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, respectively, thus signifying their academic achievement, leadership skills and charitable contributions.
Johnson, who is studying for her master’s in social work at Columbia University, also works at both the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center “providing emotional support for women who are receiving treatment for breast cancer” and at New York Presbyterian Hospital as a mental health worker.
“What I want to do is learn more about people," Johnson said, explaining her interest in psychology and social work. "I know my strength is in communicating with people. I want to be the type of person who can help restore a person’s grounding. We all lose our footing sometimes, and some people, depending on the direction they find, and depending on the help that they can seek out – know to seek out – depending on their resources, fall, and don’t get back up. And I want to be the kind of person who helps them to get back up.”
Vasquez plans to pursue architecture and will take the next step in her studies at the Pratt Institute this Fall. Her goal is to meld her lifelong interests in “arts, sciences and helping people” by putting design and service together to provide housing where it is needed most. Born in New Jersey, Vasquez’s parents are both from the Dominican Republic. Her family moved back to Santo Domingo when she was only a few years old, and returned to New Jersey about three years ago.
“I thought architecture was the perfect blend between the arts and creating and designing and doing something that was not only gratifying for myself, but I could also help build houses for other people – perhaps children. For example in my country [there is] a high level of poverty and all these children are just wandering around the streets with no place to call home, so perhaps [with] my knowledge of architecture … I can design something for them.”
She names architects Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry as among her favorites.
According to Kimberly Mandara, NBA Communications Spokesperson, Johnson and Vasquez “were identified as the best candidates for these particular scholarships [because] both of them really exemplified service in their communities.”
The theme of Wednesday’s luncheon was not just “inspiring women,” and what they have already accomplished, but how we all can help girls and women now and in the future. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was the league’s honoree. At one point during her keynote speech she quoted her mentor, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright (the WNBA’s first Inspiring Women Award recipient) as famously saying, “There’s a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.”
The WNBA seemed to take that to heart this past week. A partnership was announced with GirlUp, a United Nations campaign to help adolescent girls in developing nations. Washington Mystics guard Alana Beard and New York Liberty forward Taj McWilliams-Franklin will be the campaign’s first WNBA champions.
Every WNBA player participates in charitable work through the league’s volunteer initiative WNBA Cares, but additionally, many players have established their own foundations and youth-focused organizations.
With this new scholarship, the WNBA and Bacardi USA, Inc. have partnered to find two more young women in Johnson and Vasquez whose high academic standards and record of community service demonstrate precisely the kind of leadership that the WNBA seeks to encourage and promote.
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