Valuing Difference Awardees
2020-2021 Awardees
While there were a total of six awardees last year, this year there are four. The same amount of money is being distributed as in years past, but to a smaller number of recipients to insure that each recipient has sufficient funds to achieve their goals.
Graduate Student Awards
Tsz Yan (Winnie) Wong
SAIC
Tsz Yan (Winnie) Wong is an artist passionate about creative community engagement that supports recovery from individual and collective trauma. Before her studies in Art Therapy at the School of the Art Institute, she founded a non-profit that promoted community dialogues through artmaking in an open studio in Hong Kong, her hometown. She plans to work alongside the Chicago community to initiate collaborative programs that support each other during this difficult time. In the long-run, she hopes to contribute her experiences from her previous consulting career to grassroots organizations supporting the underserved communities.
Maryam Fakhruddin
SSA (now the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice)
Maryam Fakhruddin is pursuing her master’s in social work at the University of Chicago in aims of becoming a therapist working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence from an anti-oppressive framework. Pursuing her degree will help her build the skills and knowledge to help fight for policies on a local, national, and international level that will help better serve survivors of domestic and sexual violence by increasing their safety and protection while holding offenders accountable.
Community Activism and Achievement Awards
Cicely Green
In Good Wealth, Inc.
Cicely Green is an Aerialist, Licensed Professional Counselor, Registered Yoga Teacher, and 6x marathoner. She is a practitioner and healer of all things health, wellness, and movement, and has become a leader and resource in her community on aerial silks, yoga + mindfulness, mental health + healing, marathon racing, and endurance sports. Through her journey, Cicely has noticed one common theme – the lack of others in these spaces who also identify a Black womxn. This inspired her to utilize her platform and knowledge to create spaces in wellness and movement for Black-identifying individuals. She is a founder of In Good Wealth, Inc. nonprofit organization, Chicago Black Therapist Directory, BIPOC Circus Alliance Midwest, and contributing member of various wellness and racial justice initiatives.
Trix Kirkpatrick
A Move to Remember
Trix Kirkpatrick is the owner of A Move to Remember (www.amovetoremember.com), an LGBT trauma-informed moving company with a social justice initiative. A component of the organization’s overall client scope includes working with relocating folks that are survivors of domestic violence, facing housing discrimination, and folks within temporary and permanent housing programs. Trix is aiming to expand A Move to Remember’s operations after their first year, their advocacy work towards affordable housing, and to build educational modules for their clients and caseworkers in housing programs.