Africa Trip Winner Profile: Stephanie Parrish

May 15th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

Michigan and Wisconsin Campus Outreach Ambassador (COA) Stephanie Parrish is a rising junior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she has led the Wolverines to be the only 3-peat challenge winner and a close runner-up for our grand prize. Her consistently above-and-beyond leadership along with her strong application have earned her a spot on OCC’s first-ever Africa trip, this July.

At U-M, Stephanie studies Public Policy and African Studies, and plans to study abroad in 2010 in South Africa while simultaneously volunteering with the Treatment Action Campaign on HIV/AIDS issues. After college, Steph wants to pursue either a master of Public Health, Public Administration, or Public Policy degree through a program called Master’s International, which would allow her to complete coursework at a school in the US and be placed with the Peace Corps upon graduation. Eventually, she sees herself doing nonprofit field work in advocacy or research.

Stephanie has been a member of ONE since 2007, when she researched the organization for a class project. As the COA for Michigan and Wisconsin, she now recruits potential campus leaders on all college campuses in these states in an effort to grow the OCC in her region.

Under Stephanie’s strong leadership, the University of Michigan started the season off right by winning the very first challenge of the year: Campus Launches. They went on to repeat their success with our “ONE in Your Face” challenge, creating an impressive set of visual displays in Ann Arbor. Then U-M became the first school ever to win THREE challenges in one year when they took top honors for our Video Super Challenge in the post-season.

U-M went on to submit an amazing final project and ultimately rank within the top 3 OCC schools in the nation. You can check out Stephanie and her team’s final project here.

And as if that wasn’t amazing enough for one student in one year, Stephanie’s thoughtful and thorough design for an outreach program to maximize the impact of her trip to Africa really knocked it out of the ballpark. Check it out, here.

Congrats to Stephanie, and the other four Africa trip winners!

-Emily Stivers