Sophia

After a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia at age three, Sophia went through 3 years of chemotherapy infusions, spinal taps, 2 bone marrow transplants, 3 portacath surgeries and many stays at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC.

“I had to be the strong one,” Sophia writes in her scholarship essay. “Kids before me had paved the way for the lifesaving chemotherapy that ultimately kept me alive…. I am grateful for the extraordinary hospital care and guidance I received.”

Today Sofia strives to give back as she pursues a volunteer opportunity in a hospital’s pediatric oncology art room, a place that once served as her own sanctuary, as she studies Education and Human Biology at the University of Michigan.