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2024 PLV Scholarship Winner Beatriz Palacios on Growing Up in a First-Generation Family & Overcoming an Eating Disorder
I am thrilled to introduce Beatriz Palacios, the winner of the 2024 PLV Scholarship and a graduate of Foothill High School in Tustin, my mother Patricia’s alma mater. Earlier this month, my husband Shawn and I had the pleasure of meeting Beatriz in person at a café in Irvine. Putting a face to her application reaffirmed our decision. We were moved by her heartfelt expression of gratitude and inspired to learn more about the forces that have shaped her — both the hardships and the incredible triumphs. From the time she entered elementary school, Beatriz felt driven to achieve, harboring what she described as “hidden expectations” of herself in her…
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2022 PLV Scholarship Winner: Natalie Salvatierra on OCD, Anxiety & Striving to Make an Impact
Our second PLV Scholarship winner this year is Natalie Salvatierra, a recent graduate of Foothill High School in Tustin. My mother Patricia — in whose loving memory this scholarship program was founded — graduated from Foothill in 1970. There’s another parallel, too, connecting our paths: as individuals with lived experience of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), both Natalie and I have a keen interest not only in mental health, but in spreading hope and awareness to those who struggle. Having just returned from the International OCD Foundation’s (IOCDF’s) annual in-person conference in Denver, I was delighted to meet Natalie for coffee one sunny afternoon in mid-July. IOCDF conferences are unique…
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2020 PLV Scholarship of Orange County Winner: Alexis Votran’s Interview
Now for Alexis’s interview questions, which range from bullying to LGBTQIA+ issues to the aesthetics of feminine beauty. You can read more about her remarkable character and thoughts on everyday activism in Part One of this two-part winner’s series. The following questions were posed to Alexis last summer. Her responses were so complex and insightful, I decided to feature them in their own separate post. In addition, Alexis is a talented photographer, and her portraits have been featured on this page. What are some of the ways high school students can take a stand against bullying at school? What advice would you give to someone who is being targeted by…
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2020 PLV Scholarship of Orange County Winner: Alexis Votran on Everyday Activism
I could not be happier or prouder to introduce Alexis Votran of Costa Mesa as this year’s recipient of the PLV Scholarship of Orange County. Her application essay embodies the spirit of this scholarship program — it was raw, honest, and painfully jarring in places, but filled in equal parts with hard-earned resilience, mature insight, and a commitment to transform her own experiences into vehicles for positive change. Alexis emerged as a deeply compassionate young woman who feels called to impact her community and the broader world for the better, always pressing onward with bold and brave steps. Since Alexis’s own words express her story more powerfully than I could,…
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PLV Scholarship Winner: Rosiana Falzon on Mental Wellness
A couple of years ago, I attended a presentation on the health and well-being of children in my home community of Orange County, California. The event was hosted by my local chapter of Junior League, JLOCC, and organized by the Orange County Children’s Partnership (OCCP). Each year, OCCP releases a report that summarizes community progress on matters related to health, safety, and education. I was heartened to see positive 10-year trends in several key areas (as also reflected in last year’s more recent report): OC kids are healthier than they were a decade ago, with greater access to healthcare, higher rates of immunizations, fewer teen births, and lower preterm and…
