In Events, Newsletter, Scholars, Scholarships on 06/12/2025 - 2:49 PM
Scholar Showcase Debuts in Pittsburgh: Celebrating Innovation and Service
Despite it being a cold, rainy day in the Steel City, the atmosphere was warm and exciting inside Acrisure Stadium on April 6th as the Carson Scholars Fund hosted its annual Pittsburgh Awards Banquet to celebrate the 2025 Pittsburgh area scholars. Esteemed guests included 140 new and recognized scholars and their families, educators, CSF board members and Pittsburgh Chapter members. Jennifer Tomazic, morning news anchor at WPXI-TV, graciously served as host of the event again this year.
This year’s banquet theme was Soaring to New Heights, a concept that perfectly summarizes not only this year’s Carson Scholars, but the thousands of alumni before them. We aimed to focus on scholars’ amazing contributions to their schools, local communities and the world, while continuing to set new goals for themselves. Three videos highlighting scholars’ work were shown at the banquet and were introduced by Eli Jacobs, Eshal Ahmad and Ulyana Kubini.
Additional scholar participants were:
Nora and Roman Gray – siblings who led the Pledge of Allegiance
Andrew Gerhart – delivered the blessing
The CSF’s inaugural Scholar Showcase was unveiled at the Pittsburgh Banquet consisting of scholars who applied for table spaces to present their small businesses, nonprofits and/or service projects to attendees.
The Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Ramayya Krishnan, Dean of Heinz College, who is an innovator, engineer and researcher. He extensively studies consumer and social behavior in digitally instrumented environments and advises governments and policy making organizations on technology policy and the deployment of data-driven policy making. In his speech to the scholars, Dean Krishnan spoke about the importance of education and the values you gain from it including commitment to and a sense for hard work and compassion for others. He advised the scholars that education will help them discover their passions and realize that they can overcome any setback or challenge, and that it’s important to constantly learn how to learn. He closed his remarks by sharing that the friendships and connections that students build now will shape their future and that “if you want to go far, go together.”
View photos from the event HERE!