Meet the Bay Area Students Making a Major Impact on the LGBTQ Community
As the HIV/AIDS crisis spread in the 1980s, Tom Markowski and Jim Leach set out to create a lasting legacy for the LGBTQ community. As a gay couple living in San Francisco, the two men were distinctly aware of the lack of positive role models for queer people—and thus their legacy was born.
Through a planned gift made through their estate, the couple established the Markowski-Leach Scholarship Fund, housed at Horizons Foundation. This fund—which awards scholarships to Bay Area students working to make an impact on other LGBTQ people—is dedicated to creating and fostering new generations of queer role models.
The Markowski-Leach Scholarship recently announced the recipients of the 2022-23 award, whose impressive introductions we’re honored to share below:
Ky Albert
Masters Candidate, Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling
San Francisco State University
My name is Ky Albert (she/her), and I am entering the second year of my Masters of Science in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling at San Francisco State University. I am honored to receive the Markoswki-Leach scholarship in support of my journey towards becoming a queer- and gender-affirming therapist. I received my B.A. with Honors in Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies from Brown University, where I dedicated my studies and extracurricular work towards supporting LGBTQ young people. After graduating, I worked as a digital strategist and consultant for organizations including the ACLU of California, AFSCME, and the National Center for Transgender Equality. As a proud transgender woman, I chose to pivot my career and pursue clinical training to reduce the mental health treatment gap for my community. In addition to coursework, I spent the past year working as a therapy intern at Abraham Lincoln High School, providing case management, individual, and group therapy to trans and gender non-conforming teens. This year, I will continue my studies and work as a behavioral health intern at San Francisco Community Health Center. There, I will provide therapy and case management services to transgender transitional age youth and adults, as well as San Franciscans living with HIV and/or experiencing homelessness. After graduating, I plan to pursue licensure as a marriage and family therapist and enter the workforce as a clinician and therapist who can competently and humbly serve the diverse LGBTQ communities that call the Bay Area home.
Chloe Amarilla
J.D. Candidate
UC Berkeley School of Law
Chloe Amarilla is a rising 3L at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. As the first in her family to go to college and now law school, she is fully aware of how impactful scholarships like these make her dreams possible. Chloe has been active in the LGBTQ+ community, in and outside her academic settings. She has also worked on building community and creating coordination across identities, as she also comes from an immigrant and Latin family. After law school, she hopes to pursue tax law at a firm while still focusing on supporting those from her community. She is immensely grateful for this scholarship and for the foundation’s focus on the LGBTQ+ leaders of tomorrow.
Jack Donahue
J.D. Candidate
UC Berkeley School of Law
My name is Jack Donahue (he/they), and I am a rising 2L at Berkeley Law School. As a queer and disabled survivor of abuse from a welfare-class background, I am a proud recipient of the 2022 Markowski-Leach Scholarship. I graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2020 with a major in philosophy and political science, as well as minors in global health and sexuality studies. In undergrad, I performed various types of equity-based research, diversified campus programming, acted as a Discussion Leader with Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and had my queer activism featured in The Washington Post and The Atlantic.
At Berkeley Law, I am an Executive Editor of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice, Student Leader of Berkeley’s Resistance Against Interpersonal Violence (BRAIV), and Student Leader of the Survivor Advocacy Project, a pro bono program building generations of lawyers dedicated to preventing and combatting sexual violence. With SAP, my co-leader and I selected two projects for this academic year with one driving policy change for incarcerated survivors in Massachusetts and another drafting legislation as a solution to the criminalization of sex work in California. I plan for these scholarship funds to help in the furtherance of my education, mentorship of queer youth, and social impact career.
I would like to thank the scholarship committee and express my gratitude for the kindness and forethought of Tom Markowski and Jim Leach. Their benevolence has surely made differences in the lives of many queer youth in higher education and beyond.
Annie Gorden
J.D. Candidate, Social Justice Lawyering Concentration, Class of 2023
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
My name is Annie Gorden (she/her), and I’m a 3L at UC Hastings studying Social Justice Lawyering. Prior to law school I received my B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from UC Berkeley, then received my M.A. in Peace and Justice Studies from the University of San Diego. I worked on issues of violent conflict, global poverty, and systems of oppression, and examined how collective social action can shift power and challenge injustice. I then worked for four years supporting refugees and asylum seekers pursuing immigration relief and deportation defense before coming to law school. My work is focused on facilitating deep, transformative change at the intersection of queer, racial, economic, and disability justice. I am so honored to receive the Markowski-Leach Scholarship.
Irfan Mahmud
Masters in Business Administration
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
I am very excited to be a Markowski-Leach scholar awarded for my pursuit of a Masters in Business Administration at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. At Stanford I study social change and impact and I am a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. I am also a joint degree candidate for a Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. Prior to graduate school, I worked with a variety of organizations to further LGBTQIA+ causes, including supporting to found my high school’s GSA, launching the Alliance conference which was the first ever global convening of LGBTQIA+ business and government leaders, helping to make the Harvard Alumni Association more inclusive on belonging globally, leading the UN Nairobi’s day of authenticity, advising youth homeless shelters on LGBTQIA+ youth homelessness issues and documentation, and more. This scholarship, to me, marks an appreciation of the work I have done in graduate school and prior to advance the LGBTQIA+ community and a recognition of the work that is yet to be done as a consequence of the privilege our degree affords us.
Aian Mendoza
Masters Candidate
UC Berkeley, Social Welfare Department
Aian (they/them) is a queer non-binary mixed race Pilipinx person from Southern California. Aian’s politics have been informed by their experiences growing up in a conservative, religious, and abusive household, and their political journey after leaving to create a chosen family and advocate for queer communities. Their passion for social justice started at Santa Ana College and continued after transferring to UC Riverside where they received their Bachelor’s in Ethnic Studies. They have been involved with different non-profit and identity-based spaces around issues such as college access, food justice, harm reduction practices, workers’ justice, and more. Aian has been a youth organizer with AYPAL: Building API Community Power where they uplift the leadership of high school youth in Oakland through ethnic studies, political education, identity development, art activism, and more. They started a college access program and LGBTQ+ youth program which they are excited to continue developing as they transition to part-time while back in school. Aian is starting a Master’s in Social Welfare (MSW) with a specialization in Strengthening Children, Youth and Families (SCYF) at UC Berkeley this fall of 2022. They are honored to receive this scholarship and will continue to pay it forward in their professional journey to better serve young people, LGBTQ+ individuals, and communities of color.
Peter Pham
Undergraduate Student, Public Health and Molecular Environmental Biology
UC Berkeley
My name is Peter, and I am an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. I study public health with the goal of becoming a physician so that I can serve underserved communities, including the LGBTQ+ community. I am thrilled, honored, and humbled to be a recipient of the Markowski-Leach scholarship and to continue the spirit of service that Mr. Tom Markowski and Mr. Jim Leach practiced and valued. Receiving this scholarship connects me to the larger experiences and struggle of the LGBTQ+ community for greater justice and equity. With the financial support of the Markowski-Leach Scholarship, I’ll be able to dive more deeply into my studies and community work to become an effective physician advocate.
Daniel Pimentel
PhD Candidate, Science Education and Learning Sciences
Stanford University Graduate School of Education
My name is Danny Pimentel (he/him) and I am currently a PhD candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. My work focuses on helping students evaluate the credibility of scientific information that they encounter online and supporting science teachers with integrating science media literacy into their classes. Born and raised in the Greater Boston Area, I graduated from Boston College in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in music. I graduated from Boston College again one year later with a master’s degree in secondary education. In the years that followed, I worked as a middle school science teacher and then a high school chemistry teacher in Brooklyn, NY. Along the way, I also got certified in special education. As a high school teacher, I served as a founding co-advisor to Spectrum, a student-run organization that sought to provide a safe space for LGBTQ students and to educate our larger school community about LGBTQ issues. In this role, I oversaw field trips to the LGBT Center in New York, designed workshops to help parents support their LGBTQ children, and I co-led book clubs exploring LGBT topics. Now, as an education researcher and teacher educator, I am intentional about making my queer identity known to increase the visibility of queer individuals in science and science education. I am honored to be a recipient of the Markowski-Leach Scholarship and to be recognized as an emerging leader in the LGBTQ community, which I care about deeply.
Jack Weller
J.D. Candidate
Stanford University School of Law
My name is Jack Weller (he/him) and I’m a rising 3L at Stanford Law School. I am passionate about voting rights, fair redistricting, and strengthening the electoral system by ensuring that everyone’s votes count equally. Prior to law school I worked at a nonprofit government watchdog group and in electoral politics. I’m very honored to have been selected for this year’s Markowski-Leach cohort and I’m proud to join a community dedicated to advancing LGBTQ+ rights.
