Meet the 2022 Women of Courage Awardees
Philanthropic Ventures Foundation has announced the third annual awardees of the Women of Courage Award!
This initiative acknowledges the courageous character and impactful community service of young women age 18-30 who live or work in San Mateo County. These young women demonstrate courage in their life choices and circumstances, make a significant contribution to others, and exemplify the characteristics of compassion, resilience and integrity in their professional and personal lives. The $25,000 award is intended to celebrate the awardees’ accomplishments and contributions, often in the face of enormous obstacles, and to encourage their service into the future.
The 2022 Women of Courage Awardees are:
Faatimah A, age 30, Alameda, is a professional women’s basketball player and founder of a women’s premier basketball league here in California that supports and mentors women as they work towards a professional basketball career. During the off season, she dedicates her time to mentoring and coaching youth through clinics and skill development camps. She was also a 2021 Finalist.
Armelle Coutant and Candice Delamarre, age 24, San Francisco, are the Co-Founders of Kit Switch, a Public Benefit Company creating ready-to-install interiors to make better use of vacant commercial real estate and facilitate its conversion into infill housing. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Candice and Armelle were brought together around their shared values for developing more sustainable alternatives instead of demolishing the buildings we no longer need, as well as their foundational beliefs towards housing as a human right. They began building and testing easy-to-assemble modular interiors, putting together parts in whatever spaces they could find, and co-creating their designs by interviewing over 100 industry stakeholders and construction trades. They now lead a team of 7 architects, engineers, and urbanists, most of which identify as women and BIPOC, and have completed development on their first line of plug-and-play kitchens, which they will be piloting in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
Lena Potts, age 29, East Palo Alto, is the Unit Director of Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula’s (BGCP) Moldaw-Zaffaroni Clubhouse in East Palo Alto, where she manages a staff of 22 serving roughly 190 students daily. She has been with the BGCP for 7 years, starting as the High School Director at the same site in 2015. She grew up in Vallejo, California, where she learned firsthand that high quality education is not equally accessible, and became committed to providing equitable opportunities to kids who need it most. Her greatest joy is seeing her students grow up. 10 of her alumni currently work for BGCP, where they’re helping to raise the next generation of empowered, educated young people.
