2010 Young Black Schol­ars Awardees

NCBW Schol­ar­ship Recip­i­ent Testimony

July, 2009 – Embark­ing on any career takes more than just an idyl­lic notion. It means hav­ing an imag­i­na­tion, mixed with staunch deter­mi­na­tion, pep­pered with the sup­port of peo­ple who share a com­mon belief in the poten­tial for chang­ing a life­time. Four years ago, the Bay Area Chap­ter of 100 Black Women believed in my dreams and accom­pa­nied me on my jour­ney toward a career in med­i­cine. It gives me great joy to share my accom­plish­ments as a licensed physi­cian with the peo­ple who believed in my dreams and are, in part, respon­si­ble for where I have come from and where I will go in the future.

Over the past four years, I have given back to the com­mu­nity and have vol­un­teered as a men­tor and tutor for the Urban Health Pro­gram, which pro­vides aca­d­e­mic sup­port to minor­ity med­ical stu­dents in basic med­ical sci­ence classes. I vol­un­teered to tutor indi­vid­ual med­ical stu­dents, strug­gling with the cur­ricu­lum at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois, Chicago, Col­lege of Med­i­cine, in the Aca­d­e­mic Sup­port Net­work, as a spe­cial­ist in neu­roanatomy and neurophysiology.

To specif­i­cally share in the fel­low­ship of the expe­ri­ence of the African Amer­i­can med­ical stu­dent, I joined the Stu­dent National Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion and held posi­tions in the Exec­u­tive Office. Through this expe­ri­ence, I learned how to pri­or­i­tize, how to suc­ceed through team­work, and prac­ticed the art of com­pro­mise when dif­fi­cult deci­sions were on the table. All of these skills are trans­fer­able in my career choice as a neurosurgeon.

In the past year, I have con­ducted clin­i­cal research, with spinal cord tumors in pedi­atric neu­ro­surgery and con­tributed to the con­tin­u­ally evolv­ing sci­ence of this branch of med­i­cine. Recently I received good new, that the spinal cord surgery research paper, I pre­pared this past year at Children’s Hos­pi­tal, Los Ange­les, had been accepted for pre­sen­ta­tion at the Con­gress of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Sur­geons in New Orleans, LA in Octo­ber 2009. The paper is cur­rently under review for future pub­li­ca­tion in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­surgery, Pedi­atrics. I hope this research will con­struc­tively con­tribute to those cur­rently suf­fer­ing from the debil­i­tat­ing effects of spinal cord tumors and will be included in the canon of future prac­tice for the neu­ro­sur­gi­cal treat­ment of such tumors.

It is with great honor that I report to you, my accep­tance as a mem­ber of the Con­gress of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Sur­geons, as of July 2009.

As a com­mu­nity we are famil­iar with the proverb, “it takes a vil­lage”, and for some, this is just an idyl­lic notion. How­ever, because of the sup­port of orga­ni­za­tions like the Bay Area Chap­ter of One Hun­dred Black Women, my dreams are more than idyl­lic notions, they are aspi­ra­tions that I am slowly achiev­ing, best described by Ms. Maya Angelou:

“Just like moons and like suns,
With the cer­tainty of tides,
Just like hopes spring­ing high,
Still I’ll rise”

Very Respect­fully,
Karen L. Flem­ing, M4

NCBW Schol­ar­ship Recip­i­ent Testimony

June, 2007 – I wanted to take a lit­tle time to pro­vide you with a short update to the 100 Black Women of the Bay Area Orga­ni­za­tion. I have just com­pleted a 3 month fel­low­ship at Cedars-Sinai in the Neu­ro­surgery Depart­ment work­ing with Dr. Morris-Irvin under the direc­tion of Dr. Keith Black. I had the oppor­tu­nity to help access the effi­cacy of a method of vac­ci­na­tion against cer­tain malig­nant brain tumors. Dur­ing my time at Cedars I focused mostly on the meth­ods of cell cul­ture and immuno­his­to­chem­istry which enabled me to look for immuno­logic cells (den­dritic cells, macrophages, cyto­toxic T cells, etc) in and around the brain tumor micro envi­ron­ment. In the com­ing months, the con­fo­cal images that we’ve been able to cre­ate will become a part of a paper, and I’m really excited about it. I’ve also attached a short arti­cle that the Cedars mag­a­zine pub­lished regard­ing the Den­zel Wash­ing­ton Scholars.

Work­ing in a great lab at Cedars and the awe­some Noble Lab at UCSF (this past sum­mer as a stu­dent in the Sum­mer Research Train­ing Pro­gram) really gave me an hon­est look into what is required of a PhD stu­dent and how much your results depend on your com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to your project, while remain­ing up to date with cur­rent lit­er­a­ture. I even had the oppor­tu­nity to view some neu­ro­surg­eries which were sim­ply amaz­ing! It really helped me to see even more that pur­su­ing an MD/PhD is the right choice for me.

I’ve just returned to Davis to fin­ish up my last few classes, study for the MCAT and grad­u­ate in June. I will also be apply­ing to MD/PhD pro­grams this year. Though these next few months will be very focused I’m very excited about the future and I want to thank you for giv­ing me your sup­port and encour­age­ment! I hope that every­thing is well for you and I’ll be sure to keep you informed! Thank you so much to your orga­ni­za­tion for help­ing to make my dreams a reality!

Sin­cerely,
Debi Thomas

Note: Debi Thomas was one of two win­ners of the 2008 Fel­low­ship from The Pauletta and Den­zel Wash­ing­ton Fam­ily Gifted Schol­ars Pro­gram in Neu­ro­science which was cre­ated to encour­age stu­dent research by scholars.

NCBW Schol­ar­ship Pro­gram History

The Oakland/Bay Area Chap­ter of NCBW was char­tered in 1995 with a com­mit­ment to develop solu­tions to chal­lenges inhibit­ing Black women and girls from real­iz­ing their full poten­tial and lim­it­ing life choices and chances for our com­mu­nity. The Chap­ter has devel­oped a num­ber of pro­grams and ini­tia­tives designed to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the areas of health, edu­ca­tion and eco­nomic devel­op­ment. Our schol­ar­ship pro­grams were cre­ated to encour­age and sup­port young schol­ars recently grad­u­ated from high school, and work­ing women who are not so recent graduate’s now pur­su­ing higher edu­ca­tion; To date the Oak­land Bay Area Chap­ter has awarded over $150,000 on schol­ar­ships. Our sig­na­ture, pre­mier event, the annual Madame C. J. Walker Busi­ness and Com­mu­nity Awards Recog­ni­tion Lun­cheon, has suc­cess­fully raised the funds that sup­port our pro­grams, and the schol­ar­ships that we award today. The schol­ar­ships are made pos­si­ble by the gen­er­ous sup­port of our spon­sors Wells Fargo, Nord­strom, North­ern Trust, Wachovia, Genen­tech, ANG News­pa­pers, Catholic Health­care West, CSAA, Com­er­ica, Citibank, ING, and hosts of other com­pa­nies who have con­tributed through our spe­cial events such as the annual Madam C.J. Walker Lun­cheon. We sin­cerely thank our cor­po­rate spon­sors, and sup­port­ers for their com­mit­ment and dili­gence in mak­ing this day pos­si­ble. We thank our mem­bers for shar­ing our vision and work­ing as our part­ners to sup­port our Black scholars.

In addi­tion our chap­ter pro­vides Work­ing Women Schol­ar­ships. This schol­ar­ship is designed to assist work­ing women, over 30 years old, who are attend­ing a post-secondary insti­tu­tion of higher learn­ing. Pri­or­ity has been given to women seek­ing their first degree. With this schol­ar­ship, the Chap­ter seeks to sup­port edu­ca­tional achieve­ment that ben­e­fits indi­vid­ual women, empow­er­ing them to enhance the lives of their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Since 2004, five women have been awarded this schol­ar­ship, which has ranged from $2,000 to $2,500.