FULLERTON, Calif.- Cal State Fullerton softball starting first baseman, Mikaela Francis, is one of just 40 elite students in the nation to receive the BOLD scholarship from the BOLD Women's Leadership Network.
The goal of the program and the scholarship is to engage female junior class level students by providing and assisting them with scholarships, mentoring, providing retreats that include leadership development and skills to transform themselves and within their communities. Ten students are chosen from four universities of higher education, with Cal State Fullerton being the only university on the West Coast.
The BOLD Women's Leadership Network was established by the Pussycat Foundation in regards to Cosmopolitan Magazine longtime editor Helen Gurley Brown. The BOLD Women's Leadership Network is a motivational initiative across four national universities led by female presidents that have demonstrated their commitment to collaboration, innovation, diversity and inclusion.
Each one of the scholarship recipients receives up to $25,000 per year for tuition, room and board and also attends weekly meetings with the nine other recipients from their school.
Francis was nominated for the BOLD scholarship by softball head softball coach Kelly Ford and Life Skills Advisor and mentor Pam Newton.
"She exudes leadership with everything she does," Ford said. "She is adventurous on top of being an extraordinary leader and she will represent not only Titan Athletics, but Cal State Fullerton as a whole with Titan Pride as she travels to Laos this summer. This experience as a BOLD scholarship recipient has elevated her confidence on the playing field. She is one of the top hitters in the Big West Conference and her confidence from this experience is completely connected to her performance. I am so very proud of her on and off the playing field!"
Francis is a human services major with ambitions to attend graduate school and earn a master's degree in counseling from NYU, UCLA, or UC Berkeley to become a mental health counselor for student athletes. She was also a member of the Diversity & Equity Inclusion Committee in 2016 and has been a student-athletes representative on the Student Advisory Fee Committee the past two years. Currently, she is in her second term as the President of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) after she was voted in by her peers last year.
As a member of the softball team, Francis has played in 28 games so far this season and has a batting average of .274 and an on-base percentage of .348. This season, she has totaled 17 hits including one double and six RBI. She finished the 2016 campaign with 26 plate appearances ranking fourth on the team as a pinch hitter and posted a .320 on base percentage.
"The best part of this program is that it has allowed me to expand myself," Francis said. "It has allowed me to become multi-dimensional and explore a different part of myself. It's another outlet to do work that I am really passionate about."
Francis attended her first BOLD Network retreat in January to Middlebury College in Vermont where she was joined by the other BOLD scholars from Rutgers University Newark, Smith College and Middlebury College. Next, each BOLD scholarship recipient will be participating in a Campus Transformation Project on their campus that reflects the mission and vision of the BOLD Women's Leadership Network.
For more information on the BOLD Women's Leadership Network, click here.
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