Team Black Empowerment Scholarship

My name is Bria Dixon and I am an undergraduate Foundational Black American nursing student from Chicago, IL. My most important goals in life are to help as many people as I can and make a measurable impact within my community, the nation, and the world. I plan on achieving these goals by pursuing a career as an advanced practice nurse and making it my mission from day 1 to be a pioneer for change. I desire to not only become a leader within my field, teaching others the way in the process, but I also strongly desire to do critical healthcare research, travel to other parts of the US and the world to provide much-needed healthcare - especially to the underprivileged - and use given platforms to be a voice for the voiceless because healthcare is one of the most evident indicators of social injustice in existence. As mentioned above, I am a Foundational Black American. Not only is being Black is a huge part of my identity, but it fuels my passion for social justice because I have experienced personally and through those I'm close to what it feels like to be Black in America, and the impacts of systematic racism that are still very present today. I knew my heritage included Black American ancestors, but I was recently able to dive deeper by taking a DNA test. I learned the names of some of my ancestors who went the furthest back as well as major details of their lives such as where they resided, what they did for a living, and some of their statuses - as either "free men" or slaves to a specific plantation. Digging into the roots of my ancestry has really taught me the importance of family and familial connections as well as story-telling and keeping my ancestors' names alive.

My most important goals at the moment are to graduate college, obtain a job in public service, balance my extracurricular volunteer work with work and school, complete my firefighting certifications, and work on bettering my financial and technological literacy. I serve as a volunteer firefighter and EMT in my college town and balancing that with my mechanical engineering course work, the job that I have to help pay for college, and my social life is not easy. I want to work on my time management skills so that I can be more effective in all of these things. This will help me later on in my life when it comes to managing workloads and family life/work-life balances. My emergency service certifications will help me by allowing me to serve my community even more than I do by allowing me to participate at a higher level during incidents. Being able to manage all of this and keep a level head will help me later on in my career if I get a large workload. I will be able to manage it all and prioritize the most important things without getting overwhelmed. My strength to be able to do all of this will come from my family and my friends. My family has a storied history of strength and perseverance that I do my best to honor every day. I have learned that I have a rich heritage that spread across the Americas. On my father’s side, his family is spread out along the East Coast of the United States. Much of his family still remains in North Carolina in the poverty-stricken Robeson County region. They are descended from slaves that worked indigo, rice, tobacco, and cotton fields in the area. On my mom's side, her family has roots all over the Caribbean and Central America. They have a rich mix of indigenous, Panamanian, Columbian, Bajan, Trinidadian, and St. Lucian blood running through them. My maternal grandfather came to the United States by joining the army and gaining his citizenship. My maternal grandmother was one of the first women to work on the construction of the Panamá Canal. My paternal grandparents each had in excess of 8 siblings and were hard-working close-knit people. My family has a deep heritage and we have persevered through many major events in human history. I will apply this by making my family proud by graduating college and working to improve the world as they have before me. Once I achieve my career goals, I will make it my mission to give back to my people and ensure that they have the opportunities to achieve their dreams and not continue a loop of poverty and dysfunction that we see all too often. Giving back is very important because it gives me a chance to be a part of something greater than myself. I fondly remember my grandparents helping their churches with community events and I think it's a great tradition to uphold.