Scholar & Alumni Awards

The Foundation offers two monetary awards for Cooke Scholars and Alumni: The Undergraduate Award in Honor of Dennis I. Belcher and the Matthew J. Quinn Prize.

The awards are described on the Foundation website and separate guidelines are provided, as nomination and selection differ for the awards.

You can find more information about previous award recipients below.

2024 Undergraduate Scholar Award Recipient - Leah Basaria

Leah Basaria is a 2022 Undergraduate Transfer Scholar from the University of Central Florida. Leah’s unifying purpose for her achievements is in post-incarceration reform and suicide prevention. Within two months of her summer 2023 internship teaching at Osceola County Jail, Leah started a nonprofit re-entry program that supports incarcerated individuals as they become returning citizens to access the resources they need to live a healthier and more meaningful life. The preexisting re-entry program at Osceola County Jail limited eligibility to males with no violent felony convictions. This inspired Leah to create a curriculum and focus primarily on the female population and males who have violent felony convictions. She led three classes a day three times a week at Osceola Jail from June to October 2023.

In the jail, around 25 of Leah’s students earned their GED after she encouraged all of them toward that program. She is currently evaluating her re-entry program through her honors thesis and plans to expand into other county jails in Central Florida. Leah wants to change America's approach to "corrections" in a sustainable way that emphasizes treatment and advocacy versus punishment.

2024 Quinn Prize Recipient - Mario Mutis

Mario Mutis is a 2012 Graduate Scholar from the University of Florida. In recent years, Mario has been working on reviving an ancient metal casting technique native to his home country of Colombia. After working over five years on refining this technique, in 2022 he traveled back to Colombia and spoke with his community leaders, elders, and the leader of education, to propose that they create a workshop where he can teach this metal casting technique to their communities starting in the town of Sesquile, then Chia, Suba, Cota and finally Bosa. Mario’s efforts have profoundly affected the lives of the Muysca people in the towns of Sesquile, Chia, and Suba, offering them newfound autonomy in the creation of their material culture.

To date, Mario’s work has positively impacted over 122 families and clans and influenced his many students at Santa Fe College. As Mario evolves as an artist, he increasingly recognizes the transformative power of art in society and its pivotal role in expressing our shared humanity.

2023 Undergraduate Scholar Award Recipient - Francesca Raoelsion

Francesca Raoelison is a 2018 Undergraduate Transfer Scholar who attended Brown University. A leader in emotional abuse awareness and mental health prevention with a background in Sociology and Entrepreneurship, Francesca has driven initiatives in Madagascar and beyond. Francesca founded Omena, a youth-led, and youth-centered organization that is breaking the cycle of emotional abuse through training, preventive evidence-based social-emotional education, and community support.

2023 Quinn prize recipient - ousmane kabre

Ousmane Kabré is a 2013 Undergraduate Transfer Scholar who attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting. In 2015, while still a student, Ousmane founded his first non-profit organization called Leading Change Africa, which provides educational and leadership opportunities to students from Africa. Ousmane recently added to his passion for equitable education by creating an ed-tech startup called YAM Education, which is a self-paced platform designed to equip students with the skills and on-demand certifications they need to compete in today's work environment.

Ousmane believes that beyond the implementation of an improved educational system in his home country of Burkina Faso, he can contribute to improving the country’s economy through this investment in their citizens. He looks forward to helping build the future of education and creating a new century of promise for Burkina Faso and beyond.

2022 Undergraduate Scholar Award Recipient - Denisse Cordova Carrizales

Denisse Cordova Carrizales is a 2018 College Scholar who attended Harvard University. In November 2021, Denisse coauthored an article titled, “Superconductivity in a quintuple-layer square-planar nickelate,” that was published in Nature Materials for the discovery of square-planar nickelates as a new family of superconducting materials. Denisee coauthored two additional research projects: “Antiferromagnetic metal phase in an electron-doped rare-earth nickelate” for publication in Nature Physics, and “Electronic properties of Ndn+1NinO3n+1 Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate thin films.” These three publications explore different aspects of scientific discovery of a square-planar nickelates as a new family of superconducting materials.

In 2022, Denisse was named a Harvard Quantum Initiative Research Fellow, and won the Herschel Smith Award - a research grant for undergraduates identified for their talent and promise as likely contributors to the next generation of scientific research by a Harvard faculty review committee, and will be a co-author on a scientific paper for work she did during 2020 and 2021 at MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Denisse plans to become a scientist and advocate for safe, renewable energy, specifically nuclear fusion energy, for marginalized communities in the face of climate change.

2022 Quinn Prize Recipient - Thomas Thekkekandam

Thomas Thekkekandam is a 2006 Cooke Graduate Scholar who attended Duke University to pursue both his MBA and JD degrees. He is the co-founder, CFO, and head of strategy for Green Top Farms, a small food service business with a social mission based in New York City. He and his co-founder established the organization to build a more sustainable food system, which supports local food producers and brings fresh, seasonal food to the consumers of New York City. Thomas is most proud of the work the company did during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020, Thomas developed relationships with federal and local government agencies, homeless shelters, and food pantries to expand Green Top's contracting and nonprofit work. Ultimately, they delivered over 1 million meals to the city's homebound elderly. Through Thomas's leadership and his team's work, Green Top has contributed more than $3 million in total revenue directly to local partner farms and kept their entire staff employed throughout the pandemic.