A Rare Gift

Maria Kefalas'89了解到她在2009年怀孕了她的第三个孩子，同时参加了她的第20次Wellesley团聚。2012年，她的女儿Calliope Joy（Cal），那么2，收到了毁灭性的诊断。在Wellesley朋友的帮助下，Kefalas将她的悲痛引导到帮助其他人，包括Wellesley学生。

现在，CAR，具有成群质的白细胞萎缩，一种难以和致命的退行性神经疾病，导致脑和神经系统的功能下降。作为一个蹒跚学步，所有童年进展都在散步，说话，喂养自己 - 开始解开。“母亲一个永远不会长大的孩子是一种学习经历，”费城圣约瑟夫大学的社会学教授凯夫拉斯，told the Philadelphia Inquirerearlier this year. “We got rid of her bike and all the toys she’ll never play with.”

Kefalas诊断后,和她的家人support from her Wellesley community. “It was amazing. I hadn’t spoken to my friends nearly enough over the years,” she said. “And they were the ones who really came to my aid.” With input and guidance from friends, including Jill Cairns Milne ’89, president and CEO of a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company, Kefalas and her family created theCalliope Joy Foundation.随着“当你开始一个基础时，你可以立即开始产生冲击，”Kefalas说。

Kefalas and her foundation’s board knew that the U.S. had a shortage of pediatric neurologists; the儿童神经病学基础estimates the number of child neurologists in the country is about 20 percent less than national need. A board member suggested addressing this shortage by getting young, talented people interested in the discipline early in their academic careers. A year after Cal’s diagnosis, Kefalas visited Wellesley along with Dr.艾米沃尔德曼, her daughter’s doctor from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) at the University of Pennsylvania, to speak to the faculty and students of theneuroscience department。在与部门成员见面后，Kefalas和董事会决定在Wellesley创建一个夏季奖学金计划，让学生在Waldman下的Chec，他是佩尔曼学校的神经学和助理神经学教授宾夕法尼亚州医学主任的医学leukodystrophy卓越中心。

Bill亚博永久官网adelphia夏季奖学金1989年儿童医院的Wellesley Collecth Collecthip，于2014年夏季开始，为学生在儿科神经内科工作提供了机会。Jody Platto DS'15是第一个团契收件人，现在是她的医学院的最后一年。她在电子邮件中写道，她被临床实践所吸引，并在她的夏天，“首先是追求医学职业生涯”。沃尔德曼，她说，“成为我的第一个榜样，并为我想效仿的态度，患者为中心的证据的类型的类型设定了标准。”

Helena Yan ’18, now a student at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, took the fellowship the summer before her sophomore year at Wellesley to get more “exposure to the patient-facing portion of clinical work and see how research could be combined with patient care.” Yan said the experience was insightful and clarifying, and it taught her about patient advocacy, a topic she continues to explore. It also strengthened her interest in pediatric neurology—prior to entering medical school, she spent a year conducting research in the field at Weill Cornell Medicine at Cornell University.

“I hadn’t spoken to my [Wellesley] friends nearly enough over the years. And they were the ones who really came to my aid.”

Maria Kefalas'89

Melanie Rumbel ’20, a 2019 fellow, said she’s still in total awe of Waldman. “It was a privilege to watch her work,” she said, and to see how she comforts and communicates with families living through traumatic medical experiences. She said she also learned a lot from the medical students she interacted with—about their career journeys and how they found their way to CHOP. “There are so many different ways to get to where you want to go, and a lot of people take a pretty circuitous route,” she said. “You don’t necessarily always hear about that, so I think that was really good for me, as someone who was questioning, and is still questioning, what I want to do when I grow up.” Rumbel now works for治疗MLD.是Calliope Joy Foundation的姐妹组织也由Kefalas管理，支持全球的家庭，该家庭最近被诊断出患有Leukodystrophy。“我告诉他们我们必须提供哪些资源，并将它们连接到临床试验，Leukodystrophy-Care专家和其他可能有助于促进当地联系或具有另一种语言资源的其他组织，”她说。

Kat Gallison ’21 was a fellow in 2021 and just accepted a job with CHOP as a clinical research assistant. “This position is exactly what I was looking to do after college,” Gallison wrote in an email. “It’s a great mix of both research and patient experience, and I am hoping it will help me figure out what I want to do with my future career. I also find the work really fulfilling. I’m really happy to have the chance to learn a lot from such an incredible institution.”

Kefalas表示，她和董事会只考虑了Wellesley的奖学金。“[它]始终是关于科学妇女的世界级教育，”她说。“当你看到这些女人时，当你与他们交谈时，他们中的每一个比下一个更非凡。”Kefalas对这些Wellesley Graduates将完成的事情感到兴奋。“我不知道他们要做什么。但我知道通过这份礼物，我们必须投资这一潜力。“

虽然任何可能来自这些努力的突破性研究都不会受益，但在2012年的预后，他们正在做出非常好的，但奖学金有助于她将她连接到她妈妈心爱的母校。

“Cal will never get to go to Wellesley,” Kefalas said, “but she gets to be part of Wellesley. I feel very proud of that.”