First Gen Scholars
Leila Haddad
Scholarship Alumna
“Nobody in my family had gone past high school. The scholarship covered tuition, but the mentors covered everything else.”
Leila Haddad was accepted to university with no idea how any of it worked - financial aid forms, housing deposits, which classes actually counted toward a major. First Gen Scholars paired her with a mentor who had walked the same path two years earlier.
The scholarship covered tuition and housing, but Leila says the weekly mentor calls were what kept her enrolled through a difficult second year.
She is now finishing a master’s degree in public policy and mentors two First Gen Scholars herself, making the same weekly calls she once relied on.