Consortium student receives $25,000 John Wooden fellowship

Congratulations to Consortium fellow Virginia Tancioco, who added another prestigious fellowship to her resume on Oct. 6: She was one of four honorees receiving the 2015 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Named for the revered long-time coach of UCLA’s men’s basketball team, the fellowship was established jointly by Wooden and UCLA Anderson to “benefit deserving Anderson students whose values emulated his own views on life and leadership.”

In a blog post about the honor, Tancioco (Anderson class of 2016) described the smartphone app aimed at expectant mothers she and classmate Margaret Threadgill are developing. The app is written at a fourth-grade level in order to provide education for pregnant women, putting health education into the hands of women from underserved communities.

“Margaret and I are co-founding a nonprofit called Project Pregnancy and the app is only our first product,” Tancioco told writer Britt Benston for the UCLA Anderson blog post. “The project is looking to do many things for the underserved community, helping those who typically have poor outcomes, so that they will have healthier kids and will be healthier moms at the same time.”

In addition to being an MBA candidate at UCLA Anderson, Tancioco is a fourth-year OB/GYN medical student at UCLA Medical Center.

The four Wooden fellows — including Dr. Rob Douk, Christian Dunbar and Tiffany Cantrell — each received a $25,000 award. The fellowships are funded from proceeds from the John Wooden Global Leadership Program and the associated Global Leadership Award, which honored Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns at the same event on Oct. 6.

Wooden coached UCLA’s team for 27 seasons, earning 10 NCAA national championships before retiring in 1975. In addition to being a renowned basketball coach, however, he was also highly regarded as a leader in the community. He died in 2010.

“Coach Wooden inspired me in so many ways,” Tancioco said in her brief acceptance speech at the event. “I think most significantly was his example of how well a team can work together and achieve success. So I challenge all of you, and I challenge myself every day, to better myself and better the team so that together we can all be successful.”

See Tancioco’s comments at the 1:15 mark in the video below.