By Catherine Carlozzi

 

Sitting at past years' Matrix Awards luncheons, I realized that the focus of the event has shifted for me. The winners’ personal stories and the high-powered presenters are always terrific. What grabs me these days, however, is the celebration of the rising talent represented by our scholarship winners. After months of careful planning and vetting, we reap our harvest. There they are — an amazing group of young women on stage and screen — for the assembled communications community to meet! And I feel so proud — mostly of them but also of us: the New York Women in Communications Foundation.

 

Over the years since the foundation was created in 2000, we have awarded just under $1 million in scholarship money to more than 200 deserving women. They range in age from their late teens to north of 40 and represent a diversity of interests, fields of study and backgrounds. Is it hard to select the recipients? Absolutely! For every applicant who receives a scholarship, thirteen, on average, do not. 

 

We first “meet” the candidates through their applications. I think I speak for all 50 or so volunteers involved in the process when I say we never cease to be aware that those applications are so much more than pieces of paper. Each offers a glimpse of a life already marked by significant achievements and glimmers of the personality behind those accomplishments. The essays speak not only of aspirations, hopes and passions but also of obstacles overcome — or to be overcome — in their pursuit. 

 

Knowing how much time and effort goes into applying, we hate to disqualify a particularly promising high school senior for lack of fall grades, an outstanding undergrad missing a letter of recommendation, a stellar grad student who doesn’t meet the membership or residency requirement or any candidate whose application is late. But the rules and requirements create a level playing field, and compliance is a basic part of the “test.”

 

As we move into reading and interviewing, we vet against a carefully chosen set of parameters and the criteria specified by our scholarship funders — leaving room for that gut-level feeling or spark that speaks beyond scores. As the candidates take on voices and then faces, elimination becomes increasingly difficult.

 

At the end of the process, the thrill of breaking the news to the winners is tempered by the knowledge that so many talented applicants are going to be disappointed. It makes us work that much harder to raise more money for scholarships. 

 

So many of our volunteers at past MATRIX Awards luncheons have came up to me and said how thrilled they were that one of their candidates — meaning they had read the application or done the telephone interview — won. That proprietary feeling is pervasive among our volunteers. Meeting the families of our winners is always a thrill. As the day goes on, they increasingly “get it”: that this is so much more than money for education; that their daughters have become part of something that will change their lives; that their families have just expanded to include many new sisters.

 

In the end, there are no losers. All applicants gain experience in “selling” themselves on paper. All semifinalists and finalists hone interviewing skills and make potentially valuable new contacts. And the majority of our applicants discover something previously unknown to them: that New York Women in Communications and its foundation are out there with a welcome mat and an open door. And scholarship or no scholarship, there is something to be gained by crossing the threshold. I am always happy when candidates who didn’t receive scholarships attend Matrix and help celebrate their triumphant peers. Some plan to become more involved and reapply next year. And the second time does, sometimes, prove to be the charm.