The Paying It Forward Scholarship is our way of encouraging and promoting community-minded service. It’s all about giving back to those around you. This year, we’re proud to announce that Isabella R. will receive the $2,500 award, as she embodies the spirit of giving.
Isabella is a 17-year-old student at Arizona State University, where she studies Biochemistry (Medicinal Chemistry) at the School of Molecular Sciences. While she hasn’t yet ruled out a career in teaching higher education, her current goal is to become a pediatrician to help children.
“My love for science and the medical field leads me to consider pediatrics as the way to tie in my love for children and medicine,” she wrote. In fact, she led a massive study in neonatology in 2019.
As a pediatrician, she says, she wants to especially focus on children with special needs. “One of the deepest concerns I have is for special education children and children with learning disabilities,” she wrote in her winning essay.
In fact, Isabella has spent some time tutoring children with special needs as well as watching and playing with autistic children so that their grandmother could go shopping.
How Isabella Serves Her Community
“My life revolves around my community,” Isabella wrote. “Whatever my community asks of me, I will do, as I want to help others enjoy a better life.”
To that end, Isabella R. has been busy helping those in her community who need services. That includes helping to grout an entire basement, reaching out to community members who have lost loved ones to the COVID-19 pandemic, doing yard work for the elderly, installing drywall, and even running a three-day-long charity yard sale.
A graduate of high school at the age of 16, with highest honors and a 4.0 GPA, Isabella also entered college with an Associates Degree in Science as well as one in the Arts. It’s clear that, when she sets her mind to a goal, Isabella R. succeeds.
We wish her the best of luck at ASU and in all the coming ways she will help her community.
You can read Isabella R.’s scholarship-winning essay here.
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