Amiya Johnson Is Training to Become the Therapist Her Community Needs

Amiya Johnson is a freshman at the University of West Georgia, studying to become the kind of therapist her community needs.

Black Americans face mental health challenges at disproportionate rates — often without enough culturally grounded clinicians to turn to. Amiya wants to help close that gap. With support from the DTRF Scholarship program, she’s pursuing a career focused on those in the Black community who are navigating mental health struggles.

"The scholarship actually jumpstarted my college education,” Amiya says. “It gave me the opportunity to be financially stable enough to go to school.”

That is the scholarship's purpose and promise. Education is one of the most powerful ways to create opportunity across generations. For Descendants of Jesuit slaveholding, it also restores access to institutions their ancestors' labor helped build but which they were never allowed to enter.

To date, the DTRF Scholarship Program has awarded more than $579,000 in need-based scholarships across 40 schools nationwide. Turning truth into opportunity means funding the next Amiya — and the one after her.