By Elise Gao ’26

When you have people who are donors—supporters—they’re investing in human beings, and they’re investing in our futures.”

Lee-Ann Gallarano ’00

As a teenager, Lee-Ann Gallarano ’00 wanted to spread her wings and travel the world to help those in need. All she lacked was the opportunity. Gallarano found that opportunity when she received a Mercersburg scholarship.

For the West Virginia native, Mercersburg felt like a clear choice. “I grew up in a rural town in West Virginia that was only about an hour from Mercersburg,” explained Gallarano, a returned Peace Corps volunteer and current change management adviser to humanitarian aid and development agencies. “I wanted a better education, and I also was looking for opportunities that would put me on a path of working more internationally.”

Gallarano viewed her time at the Academy as transformative. “Mercersburg made me excited, made me realize I could go anywhere,” she recounted. “I came as a sophomore. Mercersburg really taught me a lot. It’s academically rigorous and competitive because you have a lot of really great students as your peers.”

In the fall of 2000, Gallarano enrolled at Tulane University, where she pursued a bachelor of arts in political science. She soon realized that Mercersburg’s advanced curriculum had provided her with an academic advantage.

After graduating, she joined the Peace Corps as a fellow at the Malian Ministry of Agriculture, working on food security projects. “My father was a director in the Peace Corps well before I was born, so I had always heard about how much that was pivotal in his life,” she explained. “When I was graduating from university, I was trying to decide between going to grad school, getting internships, or choosing another career. I realized that I had always really liked working with community-driven work and volunteering.”

A true humanitarian, Gallarano spent the next two decades globe-trotting as part of her career in public health and development. She explained her verve, stating: “I love to travel, so I always looked for opportunities that merged some sort of service aspect–or, at least what I felt like was contributing to what was happening–with a community aspect.

“I worked on a lot of projects that had public-private partnerships between hospitals and rural clinics and referral systems to the hospitals. It gave me an overall appreciation of the importance of community work. I do have the passion for it, but to link it back, there are so many levels and layers that move potential and current donors. Whatever their work was that took them in one direction, they still had that desire to give and to invest in people. I could even trace it back to being a recipient of scholarships myself.

“When I see people who are investing in education and investing in youth, I think it’s so critical. When you have people who are donors–supporters–they’re investing in human beings, and they’re investing in our futures.”

Coming full circle, Gallarano expressed her desire to reinvest that generosity. “I’ve always tried to give back in terms of education–through volunteering, through mentoring, through tutoring, even picking jobs in the education sector. I’ve also helped whenever I can with other students who are looking for scholarships and where they can search for them, or to help with their application essays.

“So from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you to the people who helped, and I hope more people look and see how important it is to be investing in education.”