PFund Scholar Profiles
Kai
Human Services Award
Minnesota — Master in Social Work
Like many people, the pandemic changed things for 2023 PFund Scholar Kai. Kai, who describes themself as a nonbinary sapphic queer person, was one of the millions of Americans who was laid off during the worst months of COVID-19. They had an undergraduate degree in journalism and had worked in their field writing for various magazines based in Minnesota, but suddenly found themselves laid off. “I needed to leave journalism for something more pandemic-proof,” they shared with PFund during a Zoom interview held in August (their very cute gray cat Bast also joined the call as a special guest star).
Kai had minored in psychology as an undergraduate and was interested in potentially doing something in the human-services field job-wise, so they decided to pursue a master’s in social work (MSW) degree, with the goal of becoming a therapist. “I’ve always been interested in what makes people tick and how they function,” Kai stated. According to them,“having the undergraduate minor in psych made me realize I don’t want to pursue classic psychology,” but a MSW degree seemed like a way to help people and combine Kai’s interests in psychology, social justice, and queer issues. They enrolled in graduate school at a large public university in Minnesota in fall 2022.
Throughout their studies, Kai has had to navigate the ways in which their chosen field has been (and still is) oppressive, damaging, and exclusionary to queer people. “Homophobia and transphobia are very much alive in the field, unfortunately,” they noted, but added that they were drawn to psychology by the prospect of serving as a mental health professional who is fluent in issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity. They are especially interested in making therapy resources more accessible to LGBTQ+ individuals, rural individuals, and communities impacted by religious trauma.
During the 2023-24 academic year, Kai will begin offering therapy to clients under the watchful eye of a licensed supervisor. Once they complete their coursework and practicum, they will graduate in the spring of 2024 and take the licensing exam to become a Licensed Social Worker (LSW). After earning 4,000 hours of clinical supervised practice (and a bunch of paperwork), they will take another licensing exam and they should be fully-credentialed as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) to start working independently under their own license.
Kai has been steadily working to this goal, but the required time commitment is intense. In order to complete an MSW degree, there’s a large amount of work via required practicum placements. “There’s at least 1,020 hours of unpaid labor,” Kai stated. “I’ve already done 420 of those hours in my first year of practicum, but in this coming year I need to complete an additional 600 hours.” This is on top of the required course load of 12-14 graduate-level credits that must be completed each semester. Kai also works 20 hours a week to support themselves while completing their graduate degree.
“I regularly work 80 hours a week between graduate school, my practicum, and my job,” Kai noted, “and many of those hours are currently unpaid.” The scholarships Kai has received as a multi-year (both 2022 and 2023) PFund scholar has helped support Kai’s living and schooling expenses as they complete graduate school and begin their new career.
When asked about what they’d like to achieve through their work in mental health, Kai has a clear vision of the kind of change they could be a part of moving forward. “I’d like to reduce the pathologization of trans people in our society and in the mental health field,” they stated. “I’d also like to see less working with patients in isolation. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. Healing happens through community and connection. I’d love to see more opportunities for community-based work and collective healing.”
Kat
Cargill Award
Minnesota — Engineering
If you have been a part of the Twin Cities theater scene for the last couple of years, you have likely encountered the name or work by multi-year PFund Scholar Kat. A talented polymath, Kat has received PFund scholarship funds in both 2022 and 2023. In the late summer, we took some time to connect with Kat via Zoom and learn more about their work, their life, and their community.
Kat grew up on the East Coast and before relocating to Minneapolis did a lot of work on the national and international theater scenes, including graduating from the London International School of performing arts.
When asked what compelled them to relocate to Minneapolis in 2016, Kat is charming and frank. “I U-Hauled it with my girlfriend,” they said with a grin. “We had been dating less than a year and it was long-distance. It was very much a trope. But we’re still together!”
Kat combines their talent for community organizing–they were active in the Occupy Wall Street movement and are dedicated to a variety of social justice causes–with their passion for the performing arts. In Minneapolis, they are perhaps best known formerly as one of the co-directors of Lightning Rod, a collective organization and event promoting local queer and trans artists in the performing arts. First developed in 2017 at Patrick’s Cabaret, Lightning Rod was built off the concept of “flash theater” or developing and performing a new show in 24 hours. Lightning Rod extended the concept into a week-long intensive for LGBTQ+ artists. “Working on Lightning Rod taught me so much about my relationship to service and what it means to consider myself without centering myself,” Kat remarked. The trans-led arts organization has become its own entity outside of the original event, and is being run by some of the most exciting emerging artists in the region.
As if community involvement and various ongoing creative projects are not enough, Kat is also currently enrolled at the University of St. Thomas, where they are studying engineering. “The engineering degree first came from a dream of being able to make big, complex, and beautiful art installations. I didn’t have the technical skills to execute a lot of my ideas.”
Despite arts and engineering not having much in common at first glance, Kat has been gratified through their studies to confirm that the disciplines are more aligned than is initially evident. “The more I looked into it, the more I realized how much engineering has in common with the work I already do. Things like being able to think very big and very small at the same time. Getting really granular about how a project will fit into the larger picture, for example,” Kat stated. They added that, “my instinct is that blending arts, engineering, systems thinking, and neighborhood resilience is going to be really key in dealing with ongoing social challenges like climate change.
With the 2024 round of PFund scholarships on the horizon, Kat encourages queer people from across the region to consider tossing their hats into the ring for scholarship funds. “I received such validation from receiving support from PFund. Being included in a network of queer professionals and scholars is so important. My advice is to find a person–such as a mentor–and ask them to help you with your scholarship. One of the great things about writing essays for scholarships is that it’s an opportunity to reflect on your work. And you can also use it as a way to create or deepen a relationship with a mentor. I hope lots of LGBTQ+ students apply.”
Mersedes
Cargill Award
South Dakota — Studio Art
Growing up indigenous and being raised by a single mom in rural South Dakota, Mersedes felt like she was living the truism that it takes a village to raise a child. “Everybody looked out for everybody, everybody knew everybody. I found it peaceful. Knowing people had my back wherever I went was awesome.” Her high school class had a total of 22 students, and she felt at home in this tight-knit community.
As she began coming out, Mersedes found that her relatives were supportive and casual about her queerness.
“Both my aunt and my mom said that they knew before I did. My uncle Jaime’s reaction was probably my favorite–when I said ‘I’m bisexual', he replied ‘So? Let’s go fishing.’ For my family, it wasn’t a big deal.”
When it came time to choose a college, Mersedes enrolled at South Dakota State University in Brookings, a six-hour drive away from her hometown. Despite being supported by multiple scholarships, she found adjusting to campus life challenging. “It was a very different community. I struggled making friends because I’m very introverted.”
By second semester, she was making friends and engaging more with the campus social scene. “I learned to love Brookings and being a Jackrabbit at SDSU. I made connections I wasn’t expecting and I’ve made such close relationships.” However, she also had problems with her mental health. A new daily routine and being away from her established support system negatively impacted her, and she ultimately needed to take a leave of absence during her second semester to address her mental health issues. “It was really hard to tell my family. I knew they had such high hopes for me attending college, but I needed to go home and get help.”
After several months of counseling and developing a treatment plan, Mersedes is excited to be returning to campus this fall. She is motivated to show her siblings and cousins that getting a degree is possible. “The first year is always the most difficult, but I have high hopes for the second year and I know I’m going to make so many new friends.” Mersedes also wanted to thank PFund for its support. “I wouldn’t be able to return to school without the scholarships I’m receiving.”
Zinnia
Linde-Ostrander Building Bridges Award
Minnesota — Sociology
Zinnia is a queer Cambodian sociology major at Augsburg University, with an abiding interest in social justice, local food systems, and community-service work. They are currently on track to graduate in 2023, and in the meantime are serving as a member of the LEAD (Leaders for Equity, Action, and Democracy) fellows committee at Augsburg. LEAD pairs college students with community-based organizations to learn more about public-policy issues. Zinnia is currently working with Campus Kitchen (Augsburg’s food shelf) to keep people on campus and in the community fed during the pandemic and recession.
In addition to their coursework, Zinnia spends their time completing youth programming work with LGBTQIA+ teens to promote healthy and healing relationships. “Every time I work with middle schoolers and high schoolers--the age I was when my life was falling apart--when I’m being nice to them I feel like I’m being nice to myself at that age, because I wish I knew then what I know now.”
During high school, Zinnia experienced a lot of familial conflict and often was not staying at home. While navigating so much uncertainty in their life, college oftentimes didn’t seem possible. However, Zinnia was already participating in programming about boundaries and consent with their peers and were interested in finding a way to continue this work. Pursuing a four-year degree seemed like the best way to make this happen, and Zinnia ended up enrolling at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. While at Augsburg, Zinnia has been exploring a variety of, including food justice, sustainability, and and the queer community. They found out about PFund scholarships through their partner, both applied, and both were selected as 2021 PFund Scholars.
Zinnia has also been able to strengthen their relationship with their parents and navigate the differences between American, Cambodian, and queer cultures. Both of Zinnia’s parents came to the United States in the 1970s as refugees seeking asylum from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. “In Khmer, there’s no word for being gay or trans,” Zinnia explained. “I literally didn’t have the language to explain my experience to my parents as a teen. It took my mom and dad a lot of getting used to the idea, and they were afraid they were losing me. But we see each other now and we hang out. The closest word in Khmer for queerness translates to English as ladyboy, so that’s what my dad calls me now, and it’s cute. They are figuring that not much is different about me as a person.”
Zinnia has found a supportive group of friends at college, is working at a local farmer’s market, and is enjoying cooking and knitting as a way of staying physically and mentally healthy during the pandemic while studying remotely. “I want to say thank you to all the PFund donors becauseI feel like I get so much support from the queer community and it’s so nice to know I can go to school and not have to worry so much about the financial stuff. It means so much to me; I cried when I got the phone call. I’m going to do good things and I want to someday be able to uplift someone else.”
Nour
Marjorie Grevious & Lisa Robinson Leadership Award
Wisconsin — Master in Social Work
A childhood spent in the Milwaukee area was the “genesis of my passion for social justice” for Nour. Nour identifies as trans woman/nonbinary femme. She completed her undergraduate degrees in sociology and ethnic studies in May 2020, early in the pandemic and related economic crisis.
Since graduating, Nour spent time working at Freedom, Inc, a nonprofit in Madison, WI that empowers Black and Southeast Asian women, youth, and queer people experiencing domestic violence and sexual assault.
It was through her work that she found out about PFund Foundation’s scholarship program--she was informed there was a queer scholarship opportunity for students in the region and Nour had just been accepted to graduate school. A coworker had received a PFund scholarship in the past and recommended that Nour apply. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything. I was really shocked.”
She will be using the funds as she continues her education with a Masters of Social Work degree at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her goal is become a licensed clinical social worker with the intent of empowering queer communities and communities of color to achieve transformative healing experiences for their lived and intergenerational traumas. “Right now my work is very case management based, and I do appreciate the nonprofit sector, but I would like to transition to doing mental health advocacy. I am passionate about youth, women, and queer folks of color.”
Long-term, Nour is exploring staying in the region versus moving to a larger city. In the meantime, she’s using her studies to learn more about how to shift away from community health models and consciousness that center those with privilege and power and towards greater access and resources for historically marginalized groups. As she begins her second year at UW-Madison, she reflected, “I want to say thank you to all the donors for supporting folks like myself. The scholarship is definitely going to help with school, and I like to think that they made a good investment in me. I want to be an agent of change for the communities that need it the most.”
Noah
Livak Charitable Trust Award
Iowa — Criminal Justice & Sociology
As one of ten children in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Noah doesn’t remember the possibility of college being regularly discussed. Adopted shortly after birth and half-Filipino, Noah grew up with parents who didn’t attend college and neither did his older siblings. Still, he knew from a young age that he was interested in attending.
Noah became involved in the performing arts, speech, and choir and was out to his parents and classmates starting at the age of 14. While being openly gay in high school in a red-state came with adjustments and challenges, Noah’s family is supportive and accepting of his queerness. By late 2019, Noah was a high school senior thinking about college and how to pay for it. He was attracted to the large and diverse queer community in Boston and applied and was accepted to Northeastern.
His online search for financial aid for queer college students led him to PFund Foundation’s website, where he applied for a scholarship. Despite having to begin his college career during the pandemic, Noah has been making progress towards graduation and received PFund scholarships in 2021 and 2022. Noah asked to thank PFund's supporters, saying, "Thank you to everyone who is funding the scholarships that are helping myself and other LGBTQ students from the Midwest attend and complete college. It makes a huge difference."
Travis
Lee Roehl Memorial Award
Linde-Ostrander Outstanding Gay Male Award
North Dakota — Business
Some things to know about 2022 PFund Scholar Travis: he has a thoughtful manner and a contagious smile. Both came shining through when we met virtually for an interview in late summer, as we discussed his past growing up in the suburbs and his future plans. Another thing to know about him: Travis is not his real name. Travis is one of several 2022 PFund Scholars who requested anonymity because he’s not yet out to his immediate family. “I’m not out to my family, only to some closer friends,” he told PFund during a Zoom interview. “My philosophy is that I need to be independent before I can have that conversation. I wish I could live completely openly and honestly, but that’s not my reality. But my friends have been supportive.”
Travis grew up in a conservative family and was raised in a protestant denomination that is not affirming to queer people. His confirmation classes in middle school included homophobic bible verses. “It was very apparent queer people were not welcome in the church”, he says, even if that message was delivered under the guise of concern or discussion of God’s love. “I respected my confirmation leader at the time and it’s really interesting how almost brainwashed I feel in retrospect.”
Overall, Travis’s story is not a story of abuse or violence—it’s the more common story of how some faith communities make it clear (whether subtly or explicitly) that LGBTQ+ people are not welcome. Reflecting on growing up in one of these communities, Travis recalls that “There’s no event that’s acutely traumatizing. I think I had a pretty normal childhood. But when you’re growing up in the church, you construct your identity around that, and it’s hard to form that sense of self while feeling pulled in two directions.” In this case, the two directions were his religion and sexuality, which seemed at odds and impossible to reconcile.
As he completed his senior year of high school, it became increasingly evident to Travis that he was gay, though it took him some time to reconcile himself with this aspect of his identity. In his scholarship application to PFund, he wrote, “When I first started questioning my sexuality, there was no one I could turn to. I believed I couldn’t be gay because I would go to hell. I felt like I was being torn in two. I vividly remember forcing myself to sit down and make a decision. After some reflection, I ended up choosing me.”
Following his high school graduation, Travis enrolled at a large public university to study business and began exploring his queer identity—including beginning the process of coming out. “I went to on-campus student counseling services and it was the first time I met with a therapist, and also the first time I said ‘I think I’m gay’ and I started bawling in this therapist’s office. It helped doing it in a safe space, and over time I came out to some close friends. I’m still dealing with some internalized stuff, but I’ve found community on campus.”
Travis is currently beginning his senior year, and has enjoyed his four years of being a college student, including a semester abroad in Europe, where he took a bunch of electives in literature and the arts and also tried out online dating for the first time. “To live in another country is really eye-opening,” he reflected. “I had never left the U.S. before. Even just going to a cafe and using a different language and abiding by different culinary traditions was super great. I came back to the U.S. with a new reference to compare American culture to. Maybe Americans could learn some things about setting boundaries and not living to work.”
Travis is on track to graduate in 2023, and when not studying, he enjoys watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Minions movies. He’s excited about finishing his degree, although unsure of exactly what direction he will go following commencement: “I can definitely see myself trying out a little bit of everything after graduation.” While his potential career path is still a bit uncertain, his overall future is bright. And one thing he’s certain of: after he graduates, he plans to tell his parents and sibling that he is queer.