Scholarship

Financing postsecondary education: Connecting students of color to STEM scholarships

Untapped education financing: an estimated $100 million in scholarships go unawarded each year
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As companies pledge to make their workforces more diverse, there still remains much more to be done, especially in the field of STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math – which is projected to grow faster than other occupations and the need for workers is already critical.

A Pew Research report finds uneven progress in diversifying STEM fields. It reports that while Hispanics make up 17% of employed adults, they represent only 8% of STEM workers. Blacks, according to the report, make up 9% of STEM workers, but make up 11% of employed adults. That uneven playing field in STEM fields is driving one Latina entrepreneur to work to close that diversity gap by securing opportunities in higher education.

Last year, María Fernanda Trochimezuk launched IOScholarships, a platform connecting underrepresented students to STEM scholarships for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate education. “I want to level the playing field so all diverse students can go to college and pursue these careers that are the highest paying careers in the market.” says Trochimezuk. “The scholarships are the gateway for students to be part of the STEM pipeline,” she adds. 

Trochimezuk says the platform has access to over $48 million dollars in funding for Hispanic American, African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian Pacific Islander students. Most of that funding comes from private sources such as corporations and nonprofit organizations. 

$100M in Untapped Scholarship Money

Trochimezuk’s passion to help underrepresented students stems from her own experience. A native of Argentina, Trochimezuk says her family could not afford to send her to private schools. She was able to pay for her postgraduate education thanks to a scholarship at the University of California Santa Barbara and she was selected from a pool of national candidates to be part of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2018.

She says when she learned that an estimated $100 million in scholarships go unawarded each year, she saw an opportunity to help students. “I believe education shouldn’t be a privilege. Education should be available for all. I always say the only way that an economy can be sustainable and successful is breaking the cycle of poverty. And the only way you can do that is access to education,” adds Trochimezuk.

One big reason why so much scholarship money goes untapped, says Trochimezuk, is because of a lack of awareness, something she’s trying to fix with IOScholarships. Students can sign up on the platform at no cost, fill out a profile, and begin searching for scholarship money that matches their profile. Students apply directly to scholarships from various organizations and corporations. 

To date, more than 11,000 students have used the platform which partners with the National Scholarship Providers Association. Trochimezuk encourages students to approach scholarship money as a part-time job. “I always tell students if you invest 10 hours in a $10,000 dollar scholarship, and you win it, that’s $1,000 per hour. That’s a very good investment. That’s a very good hourly rate.”

Avoiding More Student Loan Debt

21-year-old Alyssa Garbarino says she is discovering new resources she never knew existed as she begins to apply for postgraduate money using IOScholarships. She is a biology major at California State University Channel Island, president of the CI Neuroscience Society, and has volunteered hundreds of hours at hospitals with the goal of attending medical school in the future. However, she is wary of taking on more student loans.

As the first generation in her family to attend a university, Garbarino says her parents did not know how to navigate the tuition. “I got to the point where I was a freshman in college and I didn’t know how or where to find scholarships and I ended up incurring a lot of loan debt,” she explains. “It’s kind of intimidating to look into the future and try to plan your finances. I’m very grateful that I have new resources.”  

Those resources also include financial education for students. Trochimezuk says it’s all part of a goal to connect with students and to provide more than just a scholarship database. “I want to be a community where all these students feel heard and seen, and they feel a sense of belonging. I want to connect with them.”  

One of the ways she plans to connect with students is through a podcast, sharing stories of students entering the STEM field.

“I speak on a daily basis with students now attending MIT and Stanford and the key is really to give the hope to other students that they see it’s possible when they see themselves represented with that student that is going to MIT,” says Trochimezuk.

And for Garbarino, sharing those experiences is making a difference. “Just to see that these women of color are doing things in engineering and changing the world as we know it, that’s really encouraging to see.”

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.