Meet the 2011 Point Scholars

Maggie Keenan-Bolger
- from New York, N.Y.
- pursuing an MFA in interdisciplinary arts at Goddard College
- Allan Gilmour & Eric Jirgens Point Scholarship

How do you feel your Point Scholarship will change (or help) your future?
Point Foundation will not only allow me to continue my education without the pressing concern of financial need, they will offer me a supportive community, full of accomplished, passionate LGBT people and allies who are understanding of my lifestyle and supportive of my choices through life.  Being a Point Scholar means I will literally have hundreds of people behind me, rooting for my success and offering me support when I need it, particularly where in the past it has been stripped away because of my status as a queer woman.

In conjunction with Point, how do you wish to make difference in the LGBT community?
It is my hope to offer LGBT youth the support that I never got in school.  As an openly queer teaching artist in the New York public schools, I'm not only providing LGBT students with an open, driven role model, but, through theatre, I am giving them a venue to share their stories, struggles and triumphs.  I will work to fill in the gaps where our education system fails the LGBT population, teaching them about LGBT people and events in our world as well as encouraging them in their struggles to enact change and make a difference in their own communities.