Submitted by Laura Mohun
CONGRATULATIONS ALL AROUND!
Celebrating the Best for Women was a wonderful success……
Our club shone on Thursday, March 19th, at the Glenshire clubhouse as we gave out over $40,000!! We held a lovely reception with savory bites and drinks and honored 15 women. Susan Horst put together and manned a most excellent power point. Laura Mohun welcomed guests, we sang the National Anthem and Marcy Alstott lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and introduced our past WOD/Ruby award recipients that were present in the audience. Susan Gustavson gave our “Thought’ for the evening.
Angela White as the coordinator for VRA, presented the Violet Richardson Award to two high school Students: Mia Bilbrey and Ella Weingard. ($300 each to each student and $300 to their charity of choice.)
We then heard from our guest speaker, Elda Nunez, a past Live Your Dream Recipient and the owner of Mi Pueblito Market. She was so inspired by the evening that she would like to be an award sponsor and would like to join our club!Lydia Carrillo, presenting for Kathleen Raber and Joan Kreamer, presented the Live Your Dream awards to Natalie Diaz, $3000 and Amanda Boutwell, $1000. Natalie is also our regional award winner and will receive an additional award at the SNR conference held the first weekend of June.
Teri Boelk and Lydia Carrillo presented the CAS (Career Advancement Scholarships.) These awards went to Natalie Diaz, $5500 (We Love Eyes), who aspires to start a construction management business with a goal of creating affordable housing; Alexa Carrillo, $2,500 (Piper Art Recipient), is a film and graphic artist; Adela Ortiz, $2500 (Craig Rowe), is a data analyst directed at public policy; Kate Hamil, $6000, attends the HSU Leadership Program and soon heads to law school; Marlene Carrillo, $5500 (LF), is a lawyer heading towards civil rights litigation; Danielle Green, $5000, is a nursing student at UNR; Paola Enriquez, $5000, is headed towards a career in Early Childhood Education, Katelyn Cole, $2500, is in pursuit of a Nursing degree and hopes to work in L&D at TFHD; Rheyanna Lopez, $1000, hopes to become a psychologist and work with mental health patients.
Craig Rowe gave us an inspirational speech about how he started the La Fuerza Latina organization to help first generation Latinos successfully apply to college. The final award of the night was our 2025 Woman of Distinction/Ruby award Recipient, MaryBeth Larusson. She received $500 for the charity of her choice. Leslie Dugger introduced the award and last year’s winner, Laura Abbey Brown, presented MaryBeth’s long resume of helping women through her work as a preschool teacher, co-owner of Villager Nursery and her long association with PEO (Philanthropic Educational Organization) that helps women with education.
