Class Chair Reflections Jennifer Goodrich Coia (GSP Class of 1991)

I wanted to get involved and "give back" to Georgetown in a more substantive way than just as a donor. When I heard about the GSP from Dean Deacon, I was immediately interested. I felt like the issue of financial aid was incredibly important and making Georgetown affordable for a particular student seemed like a very meaningful way to contribute. I offered to chair the '91 GSP effort. I knew I would need some help so my first goal was to create a '91 GSP sub-committee. I wanted a small group of committed, dynamic and geographically diverse committee members. I live in New York so I asked Cindy Hannis Kuhlman from Kansas City, Jan Petersen McDougal from San Francisco, Ryan Knoll from Los Angeles and Keith Carroll from Boston to work with me. They all agreed that financial aid was a compelling issue and wanted to help insure that Georgetown remain competitive with the top schools in the country. They all immediately agreed to join GSP and to work on the '91 GSP committee.

I was batting a thousand-actually, better, because Ryan's wife, our classmate Alison Shea Knoll, also became a GSP member. I realized that with our 6 pledges, we already had one scholarship fully funded! It felt so rewarding to think that an in-coming freshman, who otherwise might have been unable to afford Georgetown, would now be able to attend the school that we all love so much. With our 15th Reunion coming up in June, many of my classmates were looking to make a more significant gift to Georgetown in honor of our reunion. The idea of getting together with other members of the class of '91 and creating a "GSP group" was very appealing to my classmates. In a very short period of time, we received pledges of close to $150,000! We feel like we have just begun this effort and haven't even scratched the surface in terms of the fundraising efforts we'll engage in over the next year.