The National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) is pleased to announce the winners of two scholarships for women. Shannon Phelps, 21, of Chesapeake, Virginia, was awarded the Anna DeSimone Women’s Scholarship for NHF’s Annual Meeting. Shelly Mattson, 28, of Muskego, Wisconsin, received the Doreen McMullan McCarthy Memorial Academic Scholarship for Women with Bleeding Disorders.
Anna DeSimone Women’s Scholarship for NHF’s Annual Meeting
Phelps has von Willebrand disease (VWD) and is a nursing student at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia. She has been a volunteer at the Virginia Hemophilia Foundation for many years, where she has done everything from providing childcare during conferences and retreats, to helping with the teen retreat and women’s outreach events. She will use the scholarship to attend NHF’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, September 18-20, 2014.
The scholarship is named in memory of Anna DeSimone, an advocate for women with bleeding disorders, NHF staff member and founding member of the Foundation for Women and Girls with Blood Disorders.
Doreen McMullan McCarthy Memorial Academic Scholarship for Women with Bleeding Disorders
Mattson, who has VWD, won the $2,500 scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee this fall. She has been an active volunteer, and then employee, at the Great Lakes Hemophilia Foundation. She has served on committees, been on the board of directors and has helped with youth programming there and at other chapters, including those in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana and North Carolina. Mattson has spoken at NHF’s Washington Days, the Spring Soiree and at educational sessions at Annual Meeting. She was on the Victory for Women Task Force from 2009-2013. She has also served the World Federation of Hemophilia in several capacities.
The scholarship is named in memory of Doreen McMullan McCarthy, a mother and nurse who died of complications from VWD in 1979, when she was 25.
Learn more about these and other available scholarships.
