Published 9:10 am Friday, May 2, 2025
By Stephen Faleski
Two Isle of Wight County high school seniors are among this year’s winners of the Obici Healthcare Foundation’s Career Pathways Scholarship, which provides $10,000 per year, or up to $40,000 in total, to three students who plan to pursue a health care-related college degree.
The Suffolk-based nonprofit formed in 2006 from the sale of the former Louise Obici Memorial Hospital to Sentara first offered the competitive scholarship in 2024. It’s open to any public or private high school or homeschooled students in Western Tidewater, which the scholarship requirements define as Isle of Wight, Southampton, Surry or Sussex counties, the cities of Suffolk and Franklin, and Gates County, North Carolina.
It’s awarded with the condition that students commit to stay in or return to the Western Tidewater area to practice their careers.
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Scholarship recipient Lailani Hart, 17, is in her third year at Smithfield High School but already graduating. She took pre-calculus in fifth grade, actual calculus in sixth, and by eighth grade was already in high school math.
“That gave me two high school credits before I even got to high school,” said Hart, who will receive an advanced diploma in June and plans to major in health sciences or psychology at Old Dominion University this fall.
“I really have a passion for psychiatry,” said Hart, who hopes to continue on to a master’s program or medical school to become a school counselor or open her own psychiatric hospital.
For students who continue on to medical school or a post-bachelor’s program, the scholarship can be renewed for an additional $40,000, for a total of $80,000 through a partnership with The Suffolk Foundation.
Hart said the application process entailed writing an essay on her goals and listing her extracurricular activities, which include Smithfield High’s Best Buddies program that works with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, membership in the school’s Beta Club honor society since her freshman year, and serving as president of Smithfield High’s Ignite Club, in which students travel to elementary schools to help kindergarten through second-grade teachers.
Hart said she has “big dreams” of improving the mental health care profession.
“A lot of stories I’ve heard from peers and even online, you hear a lot that people go through mental hospitals and they come back worse,” Hart said.
She said one of her goals is to make commitment to a mental hospital “less jail-like.”
Isle of Wight Academy senior Jillian Abigayle “Abby” Rice, who was also recently notified she’d received one of this year’s scholarships, plans to major in nursing at Longwood University. She said she learned of the scholarship through IWA’s guidance counselor after a prior IWA graduate, Kate Holland, received the scholarship last year.
RIce’s application highlighted her visit to Johnson County, Tennessee, last summer as part of a mission trip with her church, Bethany United Methodist, whose delegation worked to complete a renovation of an underprivileged family’s home.
Rice hopes to work in labor and delivery, and specifically neonatal intensive care.
“I have always been a lover of children; it has really been a passion of mine for my whole life,” said Hart, who currently works as a day care aide.
The third recipient of this year’s round of scholarships is Kevin Nguyen, a Southampton Academy student. Last year’s winners, in addition to Holland, were Jacy Keith and Grace Legg, both of Gates County.
The scholarship also supports students in the nursing and fast-track health care programs at Paul D. Camp Community College.
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