2024 LGBTQ Graduates

Point Foundation’s 2024 graduating class consists of more than 70 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and community college students across the nation. This accomplishment highlights over 20 years of dedication to providing scholarships, mentoring, leadership programming, and community support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students.

“This graduation season, we are celebrating the hard-won success of our LGBTQ students, and the reach and impact our alumni are having in industries everywhere,” said Point Executive Director and CEO Jorge Valencia. “Our alumni are leading in their jobs, leading in their communities, and pursuing their dreams. By showing up as their true selves, our alumni are creating a better world for LGBTQ and diverse populations in the future.”

Point is fostering the LGBTQ leaders of today to create a better, more equitable future. Point graduates fight for local and national change in nearly every major industry such as politics, health care, art, science, and more. What’s more, by increasing access to success in higher education, Point is supporting LGBTQ students to achieve their career goals, increasing LGBTQ representation worldwide.

The Class of 2024 is Building a Better Future

Point’s 2024 graduating class comprises more than 70 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and community college students nationwide.

Point BIPOC Scholar Senaida Ng is a recent New York University grad who, as an artist and technologist, explores the topics of gender and human relationships with machines. In 2023, they founded an artist collective called WE ARE THE FUTURE! which brings people together in a safe and creative environment where everybody can fully be themselves. They have received recognition from organizations like NYC Media Lab, ASCAP, Abbey Road Studios, and The NAMM Foundation. After graduation, they will continue their education at NYU's Interactive Media Arts Low Residency Program, where they hope to continue developing visual storytelling skills and work on large-scale multimedia projects.

"I'm very proud to be a Point BIPOC Scholar because it has given me the confidence to express my queerness as a Chinese-Canadian and to be part of a larger community of LGBTQ students," said Senaida.

In STEM, Community College Scholar Kieran Marshall aims to facilitate care and healing for the LGBTQ community in life and death. This spring, he transferred into the mortuary science program of Malcolm X College in Chicago, where he will complete the education requirements to become a licensed mortician.

As part of his mission to safeguard LGBTQ equality, he wants to normalize practices such as ensuring the deceased person’s correct name and pronouns are used in their obituary, including their partner(s) and found family in the list of survivors or predeceased loved ones. This work affirms the deceased’s gender identity and expression, combatting the erasure of a person’s identity when they die.

“Point funding has provided the safety net I needed to remain housed throughout my program,” Kieran said. “Receiving assistance with my living costs has given me the freedom to make other purchases, like the scrubs and accessibility equipment necessary for my success.”

 Jaspreet Kaur, a Point Flagship Scholar with a Comcast NBCUniversal Scholarship, is focused on empowering those who have not had the opportunity to tell their own stories with her startup production company, Brown Girl Joy Productions. Jaspreet, a University of Southern California graduate, recently released a narrative short film, Zindagi Dobara, with her production organization. The film premiered at Outfest, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the Director’s Guild of America, and many more festivals.

“Film, and especially screenwriting, is very, very important in taking control of our own narrative as queer people, as Sikh people, and especially as someone who’s undocumented,” Jaspreet said. “We are worthy of being seen in a way that portrays us as the superheroes we are.”