Leadership Nets Senior Couric Award

By Bryan McKenzie
Daily Progress

It started with a little school spirit and wound up with a $20,000 scholarship.

Sarah Chacko’s high school passion for leadership led the 2010 Western Albemarle High School graduate to win the Emily Couric Leadership Scholarship, presented at a the annual scholarship luncheon Thursday.

Nine other women were honored with $2,500 scholarships at the luncheon, which featured writer Anna Quindlen as guest speaker and CBS News anchor Katie Couric as a special guest.

Couric is sister to the late Emily Couric, who served as state senator before her death from cancer in 2001.

“My sister believed in education first and foremost,” Katie Couric said prior to the luncheon. “It fills me with pride to see these young women leaders and I know Emily would be proud of them.”

Chacko’s high school directorial activities fill a resume with everything from varsity soccer and track to honor council, student government executive council, National Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society, with a little cycling club and world culture club tossed in.

“It started in ninth grade during school spirit week,” Chacko, 18, recalled. “It was great because it brought all of the school together, all of the grades and the students and just getting involved made me realize it was something I liked to do.”

Turns out she liked it a lot.

“I found out that I loved it. I really loved meeting people and there’s an excitement in it,” Chacko said. “I’m really honored to get this award.”

Chacko is still considering where she will continue her education. She is considering options in England and Canada.

Students nominated for the award and who received the $2,500 scholarships are Devon Balicki, St. Anne’s-Belfield; Mary Dittmar, Covenant School; Chelsea Jasmine Henderson, Monticello High School; Sharon Renee Holman, Albemarle High School; Catherine Anne Kromkowski, Charlottesville High School; Hannah Jane Marshall, Murray High School; Alina Pankova, The Miller School; Shannon Elizabeth Reres, Renaissance School; and Nora Studholme, Tandem Friends School.

Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with Newsweek and a best-selling author and novelist, said it’s important to encourage young women leaders such as Chacko and the other nominees for the Couric scholarship.

“Their future is very bright and they have opportunities that women of my generation never dreamed of,” said Quindlen, 57.

Quindlen credited her success and career opportunities to the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s, but said there is still a ways to go.

“We need to have more women in positions of leadership, in education and business,” she said. “Those positions are still overwhelmingly held by men, and men tend to hire people who remind them of themselves when they were young. That, usually, means another young man.”

Quindlen said teaching young women that they can do anything is great, but young men should be taught the same thing.

“We need more young men to be taught that they can do anything and that includes being involved in raising their children,” she said. “We need more men involved and that doesn’t mean getting involved by getting married.”

Photo credit:
Sarah Chacko of Western Albemarle High School receives the Emily Couric Leadership Scholarship. the annual Emily Couric Leadership Forum on Thursday, June 3, 2010. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Anna Quindlen received Women’s Leadership Award. Megan Lovett/The Daily Progress