BOSTON: Laureen Chalumeau receives full scholarship to NEU Doctor of Pharmacy Program

Adebukola Ajao
3 min readMar 23, 2017

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I am so venerated and proud to be awarded the opportunity to announce that my mentee, baby sister, and astounding friend Laureen Chalumeau was accepted to the Doctor of Pharmacy program (PharmD) at Northeastern University. With her acceptance to Northeastern University she has additionally been awarded the Boston Public High Schools Scholarship for a total of 6 years, which is the extent of her program. This scholarship covers tuition and housing. She was withal accepted to Boston University with the Thomas Menino Scholarship which consummately covers tuition and board for eight academic semesters. On top of this she was awarded many scholarships from sundry organizations.

I cannot commence to describe how SUBLIME this is! I’ve been mentoring Lo since she was in elementary school. I saw the hunger, drive, and tenacity that she had as a child and was naturally magnetized to her greatness. Laureen doesn’t only work hard, she works smart. She sets herself apart by taking feedback well, honing her entrepreneurial skills, thinking outside the box, circumventing herself with people that hold her accountable and thoroughly capitalizing on all the resources presented to her.

I am beyond proud of her. Yet, Laureen doesn’t quite understand how much of an accomplishment this is for ME! I am inspired by her and how God connected us for this amazing purpose. This accomplishment was his way of telling me, “Don’t Worry.”

I genuinely used to WORRY like I was getting paid to worry.

I always used to worry, even get apprehensive, over how efficacious my methods were in empowering young people to make positive life choices. Are they going to prosper? Are they going to genuinely make it? Am I steering them in the right direction? Does my method/counseling/advising work? Yet, it was never my job to worry. My calling was to provide the tools of success and leave the rest to God.

I recollect a time Lo and I went to Brooklyn with NO MONEY, slept in a rundown motel, and hopped trains just to give Vanessa K. De Luca , the Editor-in-Chief of Essence Magazine a T-shirt of her brand @UsDarkskins. I just started to establish my media consulting business and she was basically my first client. To be honest, I was not 100% sure if we were going to make any progress by going to NY on a whim, but I knew she needed this opportunity/experience to spread her message of promoting self love and confidence, discouraging skin bleaching, and combating colorism.
It was this vital experience that led her to write her college essay about how she manages over 40,000 followers and millions of impressions weekly on her Instagram page. It takes so much determination, skill, and strategic planning to do that!

This is the greatest accomplishment of my life! To hone someone into their greatness is literally the most astonishing feeling ever. The ultimate accolade goes to God. Thank you Lord for giving us the grace to even have this opportunity! Thank you for endowing Laureen with the spirit of discernment, astute vigor, and a heart of gold. I swear, if I don’t do anything else in this lifetime I will forever be happy that Laureen accomplished this and God was able to utilize me, her family, educators, and friends as vessels for her prosperity.

Every single tear, every single minute of slumber we lost, every single headache, every single thing was WORTH it.

From high school to PHD. Now that’s a major key! #blessings

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