Meet Our 12 Finalists for the Hope for Healing Scholarship
After receiving more than 1,400 applications from students across hundreds of colleges and universities, we are proud to introduce the 12 finalists for this year’s Hope for Healing Scholarship. This remarkable group represents dozens of academic pursuits, with vastly different experiences, but united by a shared commitment to improving mental and behavioral health in their communities and beyond.
We are continually inspired by the passion, resilience, and innovation demonstrated in these essays. Choosing finalists, let alone winners is never an easy task! Thank you to every student who applied and shared your story with us. Your dedication to advancing mental health care gives us hope for the future.
And now, we are honored to introduce our undergraduate finalists.
Undergraduate Finalists
Danielle Wang, a Neurobiology and Public Policy student at Brown University, founded FlairCare, an international nonprofit that brings art-based therapeutic interventions to hospitalized children. Inspired by her volunteer work with pediatric cancer patients, Danielle has published multilingual children’s books promoting resilience and self-worth, expanded hospital programming across 15 countries, and advocated for youth mental health policy through her work with UNICEF USA. She plans to pursue a career at the intersection of medicine, mental health research, and public policy.
Emily Kiefer studies Biobehavioral Health at Penn State Harrisburg and is deeply committed to addressing stigma and inequity in behavioral health care. As a Crisis Text Line volunteer and researcher in Penn State’s ACE Lab, where she earned first authorship on opioid stigma research, Emily combines academic inquiry with hands-on service. She hopes to bridge clinical medicine and public health to advance equitable, person-centered care in mental health and addiction treatment.
Julia Oberle, a nursing student at the University of Hawaii, draws on her lived experience as a survivor of a suicide attempt to pursue a future in psychiatric-mental health nursing. After finding hope and healing during her own inpatient treatment, Julia is committed to working with adolescents in crisis, providing the same compassionate, judgment-free care that helped save her life. She aspires to serve in inpatient psychiatric settings where she can offer empathy, advocacy, and life-saving support to young people facing their darkest moments.
Samantha Brown is majoring in Public Health on the pre-Physician Assistant track at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, with a focus on psychology and military science. Shaped by early exposure to mental health challenges within her family, her time in military service, and experiences with profound personal loss, Samantha is committed to reducing stigma and expanding access to care for veterans and at-risk youth. Through volunteer work at her local VA and leadership roles supporting student safety and inclusion, she is preparing to become a provider who integrates prevention, advocacy, and compassionate, community-centered mental health care.
Joshua Jones, a Physiology and Medical Sciences student at the University of Arizona, brings together emergency medicine, neuroscience research, and service to underserved communities in his pursuit of mental and behavioral health care. As an EMT in rural Arizona and a researcher studying traumatic brain injury through advanced neuroimaging, Joshua has seen firsthand how neurological injury, trauma, and mental health intersect. He aims to integrate research and clinical practice to improve access, resilience, and equitable care for patients facing both physical and psychological challenges.
Fatima Rangel-Villanueva, a Psychology major at John Brown University, has dedicated more than 2,000 hours to serving underserved populations through leadership and community health initiatives. As President of her school’s HOSA chapter and a volunteer at OU Health Medical Center, she has organized large-scale donation drives, mentored peers, and helped connect patients to mental health resources. Fatima hopes to build programs that reduce stigma, expand access, and empower young people and families to seek mental health support before crises escalate.
Graduate Finalists
Paulina Garcia Godinez is pursuing a Master of Science in Counseling (Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling) at San Francisco State University and is committed to trauma-informed, community-based care for system-involved youth. Drawing from her experience as a first-generation Latina and her work supporting commercially sexually exploited, probation-involved, and transitional-age youth, Paulina aims to reduce harm and expand access to culturally responsive services. She hopes to build an agency that trains law enforcement nationwide in trauma-informed intervention and strengthens support for multilingual families who face barriers to mental health care.
Ashely Egeland, a Columbine shooting survivor and a Master’s student in Clinical Counseling at the University of the Cumberlands, is focused on understanding healing after collective trauma. With lived experience in long-term recovery and a deep interest in post-traumatic growth, Ashely hopes to support survivors through an attachment-informed lens and explore what helps people move from maladaptive coping toward resilience. Her goal is to contribute to more effective, research-informed pathways for recovery for individuals and communities impacted by mass violence.
Elena Dos Santos studies Neuroscience at Dartmouth (Geisel School of Medicine) and combines frontline emergency experience with research on trauma-related mental health outcomes. As an EMT, she saw how fear, isolation, and grief often drive a person’s crisis as much as physical symptoms do—an insight that led her toward neuroscience and medicine. Now working in a VA lab studying blast-related brain trauma and potential treatments for anxiety and depression, Elena hopes to become a physician who understands the lived realities of immigrant and underserved families and treats mental health as essential, not secondary.
Kimiko Williams, an MSW student at Kennesaw State University, is focused on breaking stigma and expanding culturally grounded mental health care in the South. Shaped by her own experience navigating clinical depression under the “Strong Black Woman” expectation, Kimiko is committed to making mental health language and support more accessible. Through work with children of incarcerated parents and immigrant youth, she aims to bridge research and real-life care—centering lived experience, partnership, and dignity in the healing process.
Kathy Simon, LICSW, is pursuing a Doctorate in Social Work at Simmons University after more than 20 years serving marginalized communities across Boston in roles spanning supportive housing, corrections, juvenile court, and clinical practice. Now a professor and mentor to future clinicians, Kathy is advancing research on burnout among Black female mental health providers, examining how systemic racism and workplace inequities shape provider wellbeing. Her long-term goal is to drive structural solutions that sustain clinicians and strengthen mental health systems for the communities they serve.
Kwizera Rulina, a Harvard Medical School Global Health Delivery student, founded Lifeline Organization, a youth-led nonprofit dedicated to mental health awareness, advocacy, and research in rural Rwanda. Through screenings, media campaigns, and community outreach, she has helped reach tens of thousands of people, including genocide survivors and youth with disabilities, while also establishing mental health clubs in schools and universities. Kwizera has led and supported research and partnerships advancing evidence-based trauma interventions,including work addressing intergenerational trauma, and hopes to build scalable, data-driven models for trauma-informed care across underserved communities.
Two of these extraordinary finalists, one undergraduate student and one graduate student, will each be awarded the $5,000 Hope for Healing Scholarship. Each of these students represents the future of mental and behavioral health care, bringing compassion, innovation, lived experience, and leadership to a field that urgently needs all four.
We will announce our 2026 Hope for Healing Scholarship recipients on March 2, 2026. Be sure to follow our Hope for Healing Scholarship page and stay connected with us on social media for updates and the official winner announcement.
