2024 Scholarship Nominees

Evelyn Wellmon of Charlottesville High School

Evelyn is the daughter of Brooks Wellmon and Chad Wellmon

Evelyn exudes joy and doesn’t wait for others to act.  She’s passionate in her pursuit of a safe school and signed up 100 students to learn how to intervene when they see abuse, assault, and discrimination.  As president of the Young Feminists, she worked with Amnesty International to host a fundraiser for women’s education in Afghanistan.  She’s also a talented musician—she’s principal Cellist in the CHS orchestra and a pianist who was selected for the Governor’s School.  When she noticed an unused piano at Friendship Court, which is now called Kindlewood, she offered free piano lessons to any residents who wanted them.  For 3 years, she was music director and pianist for a small, women-led church on Market Street that’s a welcoming place for people who are unhoused or previously incarcerated.  Evelyn is bound for Princeton in the fall.   

Lily Krall of Community Lab School

Lily is the daughter of Cory and Tina Krall

Lily is an advocate against book bans. She created a banned book challenge to encourage the reading of banned books that are about class, race and power structures. She also volunteered as a school library aide to promote cultural literacy.  

Lily is also passionate about environmental issues and especially our disappearing wetlands. She spent part of a summer creating her school’s pollinator garden--teaching others to identify native plants and working to grow the pollinator garden and encouraging the creation of other such gardens.  In English class, she used her love for romantic comedies to include Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” in the curriculum. And through her study of Iranian women’s poetry, she has learned to combat miscommunication and misinformation.  Lily will attend the University of Virginia where she will study political science and environmental science.

Haniyya Sanad of Monticello High School

Haniyya is the daughter of Ninu Kunhi Mohamed and Sanad Majid

Haniyya only had a few days’ notice that she was leaving her home in India to move to the United States.  It was just after the start of the Covid shutdown, and word came the American government had approved her father’s work visa, so the whole family relocated to Charlottesville.  She’s interested in medicine, and, as the school president of “Health Occupation Students of America,” she arranged for students to attend UVA’s Discover Medicine program to learn about healthcare professions through lectures and hands-on patient exams. She’s also vice president of the Science and French Honor Societies.  With student interest in learning French declining, she and others recruited new students by giving talks and boosting fun activities.  Haniyya plans to become a doctor and will attend UVA in the fall, where she’s especially interested in oncology and the Emily Couric Cancer Center. 

Madeleine Parham of Regents School of Charlottesville

Madeleine is the daughter of Angel Parham and Jonathan Parham

Maddie is a leader and an independent thinker who hopes to become a classics professor. She’s active on the tennis team, in drama productions, and is an accomplished harpist!  She’s also a straight A student taking college-level courses. Her college counselor says Maddie invests in people and hopes especially to serve impoverished Black communities such as the one she grew up in, inner-city New Orleans.  There, she worked at an after-school program run by her mother that helped children gain the same educational advantages Maddie enjoyed.  This helped her become an empathetic leader able to connect with all types of people. When she was 12, she converted to Catholicism on her own and is now a religious educator at St. Thomas Aquinas church.  Maddie will become part of the University of Virginia in the fall.

Jenk Lancheros Sepulveda of Tandem Friends School

Jenk is the daughter of Jessica Carolina Sepulveda Nino

Jenk is a remarkable woman - attentive to her studies while working in an after-school job AND helping care for her brothers and sisters - including cooking for them and translating at their school conferences and doctor visits.  Jenk’s passionate about standing up to injustice, and in her young life she has experienced far more than her share of it.  When she was five, her father was killed and her mother’s life was threatened, so the mother and six children fled from Colombia to Ecuador.  They eventually they made it to Charlottesville with refugee status, but she is haunted by the past.  She says in the Hispanic community there is a lot of stigma around seeking mental health services.  Yet her own therapy has taught her how important mental health care is.  Jenk plans to attend the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg and become a psychiatrist.  She hopes one day to travel to low-income neighborhoods in South America touting the importance of mental health services and access.

Opal Rain Stonesmith Kendall of Western Albemarle High School

Opal is the daughter of Rebecca and David Kendall

Opal is passionate about civic education, investigative journalism, and promoting an informed citizenry. She’s editor of Western’s student newspaper, The Western Hemisphere. Her journalism teacher, Jill Williams, credits Opal with restoring a sense of mission to the paper’s staff after the disruption of Covid. She says Opal creates an environment where everyone is motivated to do high quality reporting.  

Opal is a leader of Western Albemarle’s “We the People” team, which has won numerous constitutional law competitions. She’s also president of the Young Democrats and enjoys political organizing. Her high school counselor writes, “Like Emily Couric herself, Opal is dedicated to serving others and creating a more just and equitable society for all. Opal is thrilled she’ll be attending Georgetown University.

Sonia Kamath of St. Anne’s Belfield School is the Joshua J. Scott Merit Winner

The judges say Sonia has an incredible ability to communicate and listen. And her humility allows her to connect with others immediately. 

She loves finding ways to engage with people across barriers.  For instance, she volunteers at the International Rescue Committee and went so far as to teach herself French AND Spanish in order to communicate with the people she worked with there.

As someone who also cares deeply about agriculture and climate change, Sonia is president of a school club called F.E.E.D. which stands for Food, Education, Equity and Distribution.  She’s also a school journalist and a song writer, anduses songwriting to combat the depression she feels about environmental issues. A true Renaissance woman, Sonia plans a career in foreign service.  She’ll be attending the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Aicha Hermes of Albemarle High School is the Emily Couric Leadership Scholarship Winner

Aicha is the daughter of Rafa Kouki and Nizar Hermes

The judges call Aisha awesome on ALL the levels. 

When her closest friends drowned in a tragic accident, Aisha turned her grief into action.  She reached out to the YMCA and the Charlottesville Rescue Team to secure free swimming lessons and free pool time for minorities. She advocates for policies that promote swimming programs for vulnerable populations and believes swimming proficiency is a universal human right - not a privilege.

Aisha is the first female student with a headscarf in Albemarle’s Math, Engineering, and Science Academy and has been an inspiration to other young women who wear the headscarf and want to pursue STEM.  It was intimidating to feel judged for her cultural background and her headscarf, but Aisha bounced back.  She’s an audacious woman unafraid to challenge norms and break barriers.

Aisha taught herself to sew, mentoring younger students as they sewed 200 bibs and blankets for needy women in a single day. And someday as a doctor she says her needle and thread will always be with her as she sews chemotherapy turbans for her women patients and toys for her child patients. Aisha will attend NYU in the fall as a premed student.