Current Scholars
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Lisa Koenig
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Before coming to Vanderbilt, Lisa was involved in a wide variety of service groups and projects. Her greatest commitment was to The Thai Your Shoes Foundation, a fundraising organization she started to support an orphanage near her father’s home in Pattaya, Thailand. Knowing that providing support to this orphanage would always be a part of her life, Lisa continued to fundraise for Thai Your Shoes upon her entrance to Vanderbilt, but was equally fulfilled by a number of other opportunities that she found to serve throughout Nashville. These included Second Harvest and Edgehill Community Food Banks, tutoring at Edgehill Public Library, and translating at Vanderbilt’s Shade Tree Clinic. She also became the Service Commissioner for her dormitory and helped connect her fellow first-year residents with opportunities to volunteer within and around the university. Lisa was honored with her invitation to join the Ingram Scholarship Program at the end of her freshman year.
As a sophomore, Lisa strengthened her commitment to the Shade Tree Clinic by adding additional hours at the clinic, as well as taking over as President of the affiliated ESL class at Nashville’s Salvation Army. Lisa also taught regular English classes via Skype to classrooms of children in Colombia and Haiti through an organization called Teach the World Online. Through this organization Lisa was also connected with a school in Pakistan for which she is currently developing a unique English curriculum that will be taught through Skype to a total of six classrooms beginning in August. Lisa also maintained her commitment to Thai Your Shoes, raising enough money by the end of the year to fund the construction of the music room of the orphanage’s new building.
During the summer of 2012 Lisa will complete her first Ingram Summer Project working with a hospital in Guatemala City, Guatemala in the construction of a website and giving training on website maintenance. The second half of her summer will be spent studying Portuguese in order to earn additional credit towards her second major in Spanish & Portuguese. When she returns to Vanderbilt in August, Lisa is excited to return The Shade Tree Clinic, The Salvation Army, begin her Skype classes in Pakistan, and begin in her newly accepted position as a Campaign Coordinator for Teach for America.
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