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After a record number of applications — roughly 800 — eight finalists have been selected for our 2025 Hope for Healing Scholarship! Before we introduce you to each of them, here’s some fun trivia about this year’s applicant pool:
- 281 graduate-level students and 514 undergraduate students applied.
- Together, they represented 300 unique majors.
- Applicants came from 48 states (minus Alaska and South Dakota) and over 450 schools.
- The schools that sent the most applicants were Arizona State University, followed by Southern New Hampshire University and Grand Canyon University.
Thank you to all who applied. We wish you the best in your professional aspirations!
And now — an introduction to our eight amazing finalists for the 2025 Hope for Healing Scholarship….
Undergraduate Finalists
Catalina Artuz will major in psychology at Pepperdine University. She became interested in mental health after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of 14. The subsequent ordeal — surgery and the mental and physical aftermath — ignited a fascination with “neuroplasticity” (the brain’s capacity to rewire and heal itself). She started her school’s first book club dedicated to mental health, which grew to include outside guest speakers. Catalina wants to become a psychologist and provide trauma-informed therapy.
Kimberly Head is majoring in psychology at Southern New Hampshire University. As an Independent Living Specialist at the Disability Resource Center, she advocates for individuals with disabilities, leads peer support groups, and teaches independent living skills. Helping individuals overcome behavioral health and other challenges to achieve more of their potential is a consistent theme in Kimberly’s story and a motivating force as she pursues a vocation on behalf of the voiceless.
Joseph Johnson is majoring in psychology at Southern New Hampshire University. He is also a full-time firefighter and paramedic for the Village of Streamwood Fire Department, in Streamwood, Illinois. After graduation, he is planning to continue his studies with a master’s degree in counseling. He hopes to use his education to help those in the fire service who face the combined mental health burden of trauma and high occupational stress.
Jonathan Tinney is majoring in psychology and social work at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. After an accident in September 2020 resulted in quadriplegia, Jonathan has been pursuing his dreams from a wheelchair. He wants to become a licensed clinical social worker and provide counseling to those living with injuries. Jonathan, also a dad, participates in a peer mentor program with local hospitals to support others with new spinal cord injuries.
Graduate Finalists
Breanna Brownson, a senior at Yale College, has been accepted by multiple medical schools and is currently deciding where she’ll attend. She hopes to become a pediatric psychiatrist. Breanna has volunteered for a crisis text line, taught dance to children hospitalized for psychiatric conditions, and worked as a research assistant at a childhood mood disorder lab. In medical school, she hopes to do research to improve existing treatments for common pediatric mood disorders.
Kimberly Koger is pursuing a Master of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is completing a field placement internship at Health Brigade, where she works in harm reduction and the needle exchange program. Beyond this field work, she is in two scholars’ groups that are designed to support black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in recovery. Kim has survived many personal challenges that inspire her desire to make an impact in the recovery field.
Simone Petersen, a social worker at Ashland County Health and Human Services, is earning a Master of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. After a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences, she worked in Utah and North Carolina as a U.S. Park Ranger for the National Park Service. She then spent three years with the U.S. Border Patrol, where — as a border patrol agent on the southern border — she saw firsthand the mental health toll of that work.
Chelsea Sherwood is pursuing a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision at Walden University. She wants to become a counselor and serve marginalized communities that lack access to therapy due to financial, cultural, or other factors. Chelsea’s commitment to increasing the availability and accessibility of mental healthcare is an outgrowth of her experience of growing up in an under-resourced community, where it was a struggle to find this much-needed help.
Two of these outstanding individuals (one graduate student and one undergraduate) will win a $5000 Hope for Healing Scholarship. To find out who will be the winners, look for our announcement on March 10!
