Simone Sawyer is a a junior at University of Pennsylvania and she is an architecture student.  She is also a starting player on the University of Pennyslvania's basketball team. Simone was one of our inaugural JADE Fellows during the summer of 2024. Throughout the summer, our Executive Director, Rebecca Johnson and our Director of Design Education, Michael Spain -- were so impressed with how Simone was focused on how to best support students like her -- who are in a demanding school, in a demanding major, and is a college athlethe...which makes her free time essentially nonexistent. The University of Pennsylvania offers every student athlete a counselor/therapist to help students deal with the difficulties that come with being a student athlete. For Simone -- that means almost never being able to work in a group on a project, because of her sports traveling schedule. Simone is also frequently one of the only black woman in the room most of the time at UPENN. Although Simone has made some invaluble connections in her program and on her team -- the stress and strain of the workload and extreme time constraints -- led Simone to focus on mental health for her capstone proejct.

Her project, "Supporting People Inside and Out," focuses on inviting people to explore their emotions and how they need to be supported in order to thrive in any environment: student, recent graduate, basketball team, etc.. Simone has done her "inside and out" exercises with her basketball team at UPENN; with other black and brown student athletes; with campus counselors; and her coaches! She is looking to expand to emerging professional groups and even some professional firms...after basketball season.

Her project is so important because the mental health of students, especially BIPOC students, is condition precedent to thriving in a design program. Recognizing that the mental health of all students is important for success and that sometimes students with diverse experiences might need different types of mental health support, i.e., diverse therapists, counselors, and groups where a student can have a level of comfort and trust that their mental health support options understand what they may be going through.