High School Grads LEAP Forward

Marie Cisse, who just graduated from Amistad High and is on her way to Tufts, took a LEAP forward on her journey to study mechanical engineering and help other low-income kids like her get exposed to STEM education earlier in their lives. 

Cisse was one of four graduating seniors who received $2,500 scholarships Friday from the youth recreation and education nonprofit Leadership, Education, & Athletics in Partnership (LEAP) for their dedication to the program as counselors throughout their high school careers.

Forty-five high school and college seniors across the city who are involved in (LEAP) also received recognition from Executive Director Henry Fernandez as well as raucous applause from their peers for working for LEAP. 

LEAP counselors work after school throughout the year with younger students, building up educational and leadership skills at different locations throughout the city. 

Cisse and Juan Boone won the Stiefel Williams scholarship, which is intended for students who showed great dedication to LEAP as well as passion for their studies and a desire to give back to their community. 

The scholarship will help Cisse pay for attending Tufts, where she plans to study mechanical engineering. She joined LEAP in February as a junior counselor at the Quinnipiac Meadows location, where she worked with younger kids designing curricula and fun athletic activities. 

She is in particular interested in helping expose younger kids, through LEAP, to STEM education. 

“People from low-income backgrounds like me aren’t able to learn about STEM until much later in our lives, preventing us from finding what we’re truly passionate about. I was lucky and got to learn about engineering, and I want to be able to give back to my community and see myself working with LEAP throughout my time at Tufts and after I graduate,” said Cisse. 

To win the scholarship, Cisse and Boone had to write essays. They both focused on giving back to the community and how LEAP had helped them achieve this goal. 

“I wrote about what I had learned working with these kids, because I learned a lot about myself and had a lot of really interesting experiences with the kids. I learned that every kid is different. For example, one of the first kids I worked with didn’t really like our curriculum, so I helped tweak it for him, and he immediately started doing his homework and better,” said Boone.

Boone plans to study marketing at Southern Connecticut State University. He just graduated Hill Regional Career Center and joined LEAP as a junior counselor in 2020. He worked in the Fair Haven and Quinnipiac locations.

Alyssa Findlay and Ahmad Al Zouabi won the Regina Winters scholarship. The late Winters, a patron and founder of LEAP, was an architect based in New Haven.

“This scholarship is deeply personal to me,” said Fernandez. ​“We look for people that most emulate all of Regina’s best qualities: her intellect, her wit, her passion, her ambition, her talent, her ability to connect with people.”

The scholarship was created after Winter’s death in 2016.

Findlay began at LEAP in 2020 and has continued as a counselor for 7 and 8‑year-old girls in Fair Haven.

“The most important thing I’ve learned with my time at LEAP is patience and how to understand and help younger kids in their education,” said Findlay.

Findlay, who graduated from High School in the Community, plans to pursue a pre-med track at Johns Hopkins University. 

Al Zouabi has worked as a LEAP junior counselor in Newhallville for the last three years. The Hillhouse graduate plans to pursue a chemical engineering degree at University of Connecticut.

“Working with these kids and LEAP was a really rewarding and important experience of my time in high school, and I look forward to continuing my work with LEAP in the future,” said Al Zouabi.

One of the counselors also cited for her work Friday was Ramzia Issa, the site coordinator in Dixwell. She has just graduated from Albertus Magnus College and is continuing her studies at the NYU School for Global and Public Health.

As site coordinator, Issa helped design the curriculum for the students she oversaw and also supervised a staff of 21 counselors.

“LEAP helped me develop my own confidence and public speaking skills, and their college tours where they took counselors to different colleges is when I discovered my passion for global health. I wouldn’t be here today without all the help LEAP has given me . It’s rewarding to see my own counselors grow in the same way I have in the last six years with LEAP,” said Issa.