Inspired to Em p o w e r Schreyer Scholar alumni are motivated to succeed after they leave Penn State. Many of them are equally motivated to use their position, experience and/or knowledge to help others succeed. These are just three Scholar alumni who have, in the past year, created organizations capable of helping countless others succeed.
Carpenter graduated from Penn State with honors in music in 2014 and began a career that has included more than 250 performances in Munich, Berlin, Nuremberg, and Freiburg, Germany. He and Graham Sanders, his teacher and mentor, and Joseph Helinski, a 2017 Penn State graduate and a private voice and piano instructor in Pittsburgh, were inspired to create the business by the pivot to virtual connection during the coronavirus pandemic.
The network gives members weekly challenges, such as tracking how many times they apologized in a week or brainstorming ways to say “no.” It also generates discussion via regular posts and topics and allows members to customize their notifications and feeds.
Consequential Flowers also committed to donate a portion of its net profits from product sales to support Rebuild the Block, a nonprofit organization that helps Black-owned business
Garcia Todd partnered with Science ATL, an organization that aims to build equitable access to science in the metro Atlanta area, to start the STEM Professionals School Partnership Program last fall. In only a few months, the program paired 32 STEM professionals with 32 teachers in the region to create regular interactions throughout the school year. They recruited diverse STEM professionals to ensure underrepresented students saw themselves in these individuals.
“I thought it would be cool to be able to afford resources to those communities where kids are interested in learning from these people, but they don’t have the resources to get to these cities. This is a way to connect them online.” Carpenter credits the “entrepreneurial spirit” he saw in his fellow Scholars with helping him craft the skill set that has helped him launch MAESTRO Artists. He has long believed the arts help maintain beauty in society and wants to help bring them to others.
“We’ve worked to identify the needs that each teacher has around enhancing their STEM education, their programming,” Garcia Todd said, “and what are the assets that the STEM professionals have to fill those needs to make it a very fruitful year together?”
“I think if we can teach people or provide them the resources to connect better with each other, I think that’s invaluable,” he said. “We’re trying to bridge that gap for people so that they can learn what I think is essential to their lives, really, even if they don’t know it.”
With the expansion of virtual meetings throughout the pandemic, Garcia Todd, a global strategic manager for pharma solutions at International Flavors & Fragrances, now engages with classrooms and organizations across the country on almost a weekly basis. In May, Garcia Todd was one of more than 120 female STEM professionals honored with 3D-printed statues in their images in the #IfThenSheCan — The Exhibit at the North Park Center in Dallas, Texas. She said she began to understand the impact she could have as a role model — for female students in particular — after she started visiting her children’s school, where she would talk about careers or perform chemistry experiments for the students.
Scholar alumna Jayme Anne Goldberg launched Consequential Flowers, a private social media network designed to help young women grow together as leaders, in January with partnerships formed with the College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Smeal College of Business. The network is designed for undergraduate and graduate female students and young professionals and uses a collaborative, data-driven approach to develop impactful leadership skills that will apply to any industry. “Women’s support of each other will be motivated by the joy we feel from bringing out the best in ourselves and each other,” said Goldberg, who graduated from Penn State with honors in finance and has taken active roles as a mentor throughout her career as an executive in the investment and data analysis industries. “It will be a behavioral norm for women within and across industries, communities, and cultures to learn, support, and collaborate together.” 20
“I want our next generation of leaders to have more impact and have joy, by knowing what their passion is and be great at it and enabled,” Goldberg said. “They’re going to be able to underwrite culture before they go somewhere to make sure it’s a place where they’re able to thrive.”
“I wanted it to be more meaningful and to be a long-term relationship,” she said.
“Most of these professionals live in New York, London, Berlin,” Carpenter said. “I was thinking, ‘What happens if you’re someone who’s in the middle of central Pennsylvania?’
John Carpenter, a Scholar alumnus and opera singer, wanted to help aspiring singers learn how to audition and navigate the profession on multiple continents. That’s why he and two colleagues, including his former singing teacher, launched MAESTRO Artists, an online musical education platform designed to connect students of all ages with professionals who have successfully navigated the music world and can offer advice and guidance.
founded in 2020 by Scholar alumna Zelnnetta Clark and fellow Penn State alumna Alexis Akarolo. Its on-campus partnerships include one with Smeal Women in Business.
Paula Garcia Todd had attended lots of career days, visiting grade-school or high school classrooms and engaging students about the possibilities of STEAM careers. When the 2003 chemical engineering alumna was awarded a grant from the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences’ IF/THEN Ambassador program in 2019, she saw an opportunity to have a greater impact on those students and their teachers.
“A lot of kids questioned whether I was really an engineer, because they expected a man to come into the classroom,” she said, “and I realized I could make a big impact on a lot of kids if I just put myself out there more.”
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