Meet These LGBTQ Student Trailblazers: 2025 Markowski-Leach Scholarship

My name is Myaan Sonenshein and I am a senior at Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the Creative Writing Department. I am a spoken word artist and poet, whose writing focuses on the female body and experience, as well as my lesbian identity. I am very passionate about history and advocacy, with an emphasis on how we can connect through the arts and education. I will attend Stanford this fall, where I will double major in Sociology and Human Biology, with a Creative Writing minor. I want to continue learning and writing, and conduct my own research on how gender and sexuality discrimination affects the physical and mental body.

I hope to use my findings to work with elected officials to shape policies that make our society a more open, accepting, and loving environment. The Markowski-Leach Scholarship means that I get to explore my education close to the heart of the gay rights movement: San Francisco. My proximity to the historical city will further enrich my research and growth as both a queer woman and a curious human. I am beyond grateful to be recognized as a positive role model for the queer community, and intend to use the scholarship money to help fund research and creative project opportunities at Stanford that will make our world and community a better place. Thank you so much!

My name is Nina Sherpa-Pine (she/her/hers), and I am queer, multiracial, and originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. I am a Health Promotion Specialist with over a decade of experience in person-centered care, stigma reduction, and sexual and reproductive health. I hold a BA in Critical Theory and Social Justice from Occidental College, an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and am a Certified Health Education Specialist. In all of my work, I strive to center reproductive justice, trauma responsiveness, and cultural humility.

I am incredibly honored and grateful to receive the Markowski-Leach Scholarship in support of my goal to become a Marriage and Family Therapist. As I pursue an MA in Counseling Psychology at the University of San Francisco, I aim to provide LGBTQIA-affirming care and specialize in sexual and reproductive trauma. As a scholarship recipient, I hope to uplift Tom Markowski and Jim Leach’s mission by serving queer communities, building upon the legacy of those who came before me, and creating opportunities for others.

My name is Sulynn Miao (any pronouns) and I am thrilled to be a 2025 recipient of the Markowski-Leach Scholarship. I am a graduate student pursuing my master’s degree in the Asian American Studies program at San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies. My thesis is on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) high school curriculum pedagogy and praxis and the role this plays in facilitating the classroom as a space for collective dialogue and healing. I am collaborating with teachers to design a curriculum that centers a critical, culturally responsive, ethnic studies approach to engage students as scholars in exploring their intersectional racial, gender, and sexual identities, as well as sharpening their critical thinking skills about systems of power.

I believe that education systems have a responsibility to nurture the wellbeing of our most marginalized students. Having experienced the lack of it in my own schooling experiences and seen its transformative power through my work, I am motivated to seek better solutions for today’s queer and trans youth of color. This scholarship will support, not only my thesis work, but also my lifelong mission: to uplift the lives of young queer people of color through culturally-sustaining and identity-affirming educational and community programming.

J is a first-generation dual-degree MD/MBA student at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business, where their work has centered on LGBTQ+ health, and expanding access and equity in healthcare for underserved communities. At Stanford, J is a LEADER Fellow and BOLD Fellow, has held leadership roles in SMSA, CCAP, and LGBTQ+ Meds, served on the Committee on Admissions and Stanford Medicine’s Diversity Advisory Panel, and been involved in the development of the LGBTQ+ curriculum at the School of Medicine. They have worked in outreach and advocacy initiatives as a Valley Fellow and on behalf of SUMMA, and undertook their clinical training as part of the LGBTQ+ Health Track in Community Health with Stanford’s LGBTQ+ Health Program. J aims to use their dual MD/MBA training to pursue a career that bridges clinical care with policy and advocacy, with the goal of driving meaningful systemic reform in how healthcare systems engage with and serve LGBTQ+ communities. They are honored to receive the Markowski-Leach scholarship: it has been deeply meaningful, as the scholarship’s mission and values strongly resonate with their own.

I am beyond honored to be a Markowski-Leach Scholarship recipient to support my undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. In facilitating my pursuit of my degree, this scholarship will allow me to eventually pursue a PhD in biochemistry. As a lesbian, I am passionate about improving queer visibility in academia. It means the world to me to have found queer community at Cal; I want to pay forward the sense of belonging and inclusivity that I have experienced here.

As a student, I am passionate about using research to improve the lives of others: drug development, renewable energy development, and agricultural development are all areas of research I have explored in my time at Berkeley, and all represent areas of research I could eventually pursue. This scholarship represents the combination of these two passions.

My name is Patrick Skehan and I am pursuing a MBA at Stanford University. Prior to my MBA, I obtained an undergraduate degree in Law and French from Trinity College Dublin and was a visiting fellow at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris.

During my time at the Ecole Normale, I launched a non-profit dedicated to youth mental health, Nightline France. Beginning with the deployment of listening services run by students, for students, the areas of Nightline’s work gradually expanded to include suicide prevention programs on college/high school campuses, online mental health tools, awareness campaigns as well as research and lobbying actions. Nightline France has grown to become the largest NGO dedicated to youth mental health in France.

My experiences as an LGBT person were essential in my motivation behind launching Nightline and a large number of the actions launched by us specifically aim to help struggling LGBT youth.

Thanks to the Markowski-Leach Scholarship, I hope to use my MBA at Stanford as an opportunity to further develop my skills and continue to launch mental health projects that positively impact the entirety of the LGBT community.

Braxton holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, a B.S. in Neuroscience, and an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University. As an undergraduate student, he worked to establish and run the undergraduate Out in STEM club at Brown (oSTEM@Brown). During his graduate studies, he continued supporting this club while co-chairing the graduate chapter. oSTEM is an international organization that provides resources and mentorship to LGBTQ+ students and professionals in STEM fields. Through this work, he organized panel discussions on mentorship, job searches, and being out at work. His efforts led to oSTEM hosting over a dozen speakers, including physicians who shared insights on trans health research and data analytics with the Brown community. To further promote inclusivity, Braxton organized collaborations with other affinity groups and featured speakers advocating for people who are LGBTQ+, POC, and/or have disabilities in STEM. He planned more than thirty socials, sponsored conference attendance, and ran anti-harassment campaigns.

Outside his LGBTQ+ advocacy work, Braxton spent two years studying the neural circuits of pain, four years studying breast and ovarian cancer, and a gap year studying ME/CFS and Long COVID.