Jefferson Award Winner Puts Students On Track To College Success
BURLINGAME (KPIX 5) This week's Jefferson Award winner is a champion of students who are overcoming great obstacles. Gail Diserens volunteers behind the scenes. She helps students realize their dreams of graduating from college, so they can give back to their communities.
"Hey!" Gail Diserens called, opening the door to Nick Lyons. "It's good to see you," she said, giving the young man on her doorstep a hug.
When Lyons comes to visit this Burlingame house, it's like coming home. Diserens and her husband have been his mentors for three years.
"They've become family," he explained. "I really hope I maintain that throughout my life."
Lyons has had a tough life: he's been through foster care and juvenile hall. His parents were addicted to drugs. But today, he's studying at Cal State Monterey Bay. And he gets help from Students Rising Above, a nonprofit that offers at-risk college students financial support and one-on-one mentoring.
As an SRA mentor, Diserens offers guidance.
"I'll get too stressed out from work or studying or school and she'll be there to help me out, somebody to talk to," Lyons said.
"That's the beauty of mentoring," said Diserens. "You bring something to their lives. But they bring so much more back to your lives."
Diserens and her husband started mentoring with SRA several years ago. And she's recruited more than 50 other mentors. The Burlingame mother of three says she's inspired by students like Lyons, determined to be their family's first college graduates.
"They come from unbelievable hardship, most of the students," she said. "And they've already figured out that they want to be students and education is their way out of this."
Not only is Diserens a mentor and recruiter of mentors, she's also a prolific fundraiser. She's chaired SRA's annual gala for six years, and raised more than $2.5 million, tripling the number of students the program can support. Students crowned Gail the gala's fundraising queen in 2012.
She's also hosted fundraising hoe-downs at her Sonoma home.
SRA Community Outreach Events Manager Jennifer Kockos says it's a joy serving with her.
"She's always doing the best she can for the right reasons, and giving it her all," Kockos said.
"I feel like we're all making a difference," Diserens added.
So for her volunteer work as mentor, recruiter, and fundraiser for Students Rising Above, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Gail Diserens.
Note: KPIX 5's own Wendy Tokuda co-founded Students Rising Above as a scholarship program in 1998. It has since broadened in scope, and she continues to profile the students' stories on KPIX 5.
