Celebrating Three Outstanding Central Virginia Students

Image caption: JACV 2026 JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients Jahniya, Nicole and Simone

For 60 years, Junior Achievement of Central Virginia has given students opportunities to step outside the usual classroom and try something real. This year's JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients each took something different from those experiences.

The scholarship recognizes high school students who have participated in a JA program and can speak to what they learned. With support from M&T Bank, three Central Virginia students each received a $2,500 scholarship to support their education.

Jahniya, Nicole and Simone are heading toward very different futures. Jahniya is now a senior at Richmond Community High School and plans to pursue occupational therapy. Nicole is a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she is studying Business-Marketing Communication and Analytics, and hopes to become a real estate developer and architect. Simone is attending American University, where she is studying Business, Language and Culture: French, with a specialization in economics, and hopes to build a career in commerce and foreign trade.

Their takeaways from their JA experiences are just as varied and unique as their future paths, and we’re proud to spotlight their stories as shining examples of the ways JA experiences can shape how young people see themselves, their choices and their futures.

Jahniya’s experience at JA Finance Park changed the way she thinks about what happens between choosing a career and earning a paycheck. For Nicole, the transformation happened in the classroom as she spent three years with JA High School Heroes, learning to teach, adapt and lead. And Simone left JA Finance Park with a new willingness to question what she thought she already knew about money.

Image caption: Jahniya, far left, at a table at Finance Park with her classmates and her VACU volunteer, Waukesha.

Jahniya

At Finance Park, Jahniya was excited to try a career that felt connected to the future she was already imagining. She was assigned the role of a Licensed Practical Nurse working toward becoming a Registered Nurse and then had to figure out how to make her salary cover the life attached to it.

"As an LPN, my income was low, which made it hard to pay for housing, transportation, and other things I wanted," she wrote.

For the simulation, that meant making choices about housing, transportation, insurance, food and the other expenses that quickly add up.

Jahniya left Finance Park thinking about more than the numbers. Working with Waukesha, a volunteer from Virginia Credit Union, she learned more about credit cards, credit scores and responsible borrowing. Looking back, she says she would have spent even more time asking questions about credit and loans.

She started making changes at home.

"Before the program, I did not think much about budgeting, saving, or how financial decisions can affect my goals. Since participating in the program, I have started making small budgets and thinking carefully before spending my money. I pay more attention to what I really need versus what I want."

She has started saving for emergencies and future goals, including college.

Jahniya is now a senior at Richmond Community High School and plans to pursue occupational therapy. She is one of JACV's 2026 JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients and received a $2,500 scholarship supported by M&T Bank to help with her education.

Image caption: Nicole can be seen clapping to get the students' attention during one of her first teaching days in Caroline County as a JA High School Hero.

Nicole

Nicole's first time teaching a fifth-grade class was not easy.

"There are many things that go wrong in life," she wrote. "I never grasped that until I taught my first 5th grade class. It was very humbling how much confidence I lacked."

With the support of her teacher, Stephanie Sadler, and JACV staff members Dakota Bailey and Cynthia Pantaleo, she kept going.

For three years, Nicole participated in JA High School Heroes, preparing and teaching JA lessons to elementary students in Bowling Green.

She learned to ask her teammates for help, improvise and adjust when something was not working. During one activity this past spring, she noticed that having the whole class get up and move around made the room louder and harder to manage.

"I think switching it up would make my lessons go smoother so I can see what does work and what doesn't."

By senior year, she could see the difference.

"Comparing my sophomore year self to my senior year self, I did so much better this year than my first year. My mindset shifted from being completely scared of public speaking to, 'I can do this if I KNOW I can.'"

We are so proud to have watched Nicole’s transformation. She, of course, gives much of the credit to her students.

"They teach you so much about life," she wrote.

"Not only did they teach me new things I never knew about, they also unlocked a part of me that I never knew existed."

Now a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University, Nicole is studying Business-Marketing Communication and Analytics. She hopes to become a real estate developer and architect.

And the classrooms where she spent those three years have influenced what she hopes to build.

"I want to design a place where everyone can fit and isn't too small."

Nicole is one of JACV's 2026 JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients and received a $2,500 scholarship supported by M&T Bank as she began her next chapter at VCU.

Image caption: Truist Bank volunteers regularly at Finance Park; Pam, in the lower left, worked with Simone during her field trip.

Simone

Simone walked into Finance Park thinking she had her future figured out.

"Thinking I knew all about budgeting going in, I was surprisingly delighted to learn that was far from the truth," she wrote.

The simulation put that assumption to the test. As Simone worked through an adult budget, the costs kept adding up. Pam, a volunteer with Truist Bank, helped her think through what mattered most when an entry-level salary could not cover everything.

The lessons from Finance Park followed her home.

"I checked my real debit card expenses and found I was eating out with friends much more than I thought."

She began looking more carefully at the purchases she was making with money from her part-time job.

"Unfortunately, they have not provided a valuable return on my investment," she wrote.

Finance Park also changed the way she thinks about career choices. Simone’s simulated career was in politics, and she saw her projected salary increase by only $6,000 over 10 years while classmates with similar starting salaries saw much greater growth in other fields.

"Understanding trajectory and growth is now a bigger factor for me when I'm considering various paths," she wrote.

The point was not that a bigger paycheck automatically makes a career better. Simone came away understanding that career decisions have financial consequences and that she has a say in those decisions.

"Knowing that I have control over my earnings based on my career path was definitely eye-opening. I think it's so important to feel a sense of belonging in conversations about money."

Simone is now studying at American University, where she is pursuing Business, Language and Culture: French, with a specialization in economics. She plans to pursue her interests in commerce and foreign trade and explore internship opportunities with organizations supporting women in political leadership.

Simone is one of JACV's 2026 JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients and received a $2,500 scholarship supported by M&T Bank as she began college.

Congratulations to this year’s JA Student Ambassadors

Jahniya, Nicole and Simone each came away from JA with something of her own.

The changes in mindset they experienced are at the heart of what Junior Achievement is here to do: give young people meaningful experiences that help them make sense of the choices in front of them, and give them the confidence to make those choices for themselves.

For 60 years, Junior Achievement of Central Virginia has been creating those opportunities for students across our region. We are proud that Jahniya, Nicole and Simone are part of that story, and even prouder of what they are already doing with what they learned.

Jahniya, Nicole and Simone are our 2026 JA Student Ambassador Scholarship recipients. We are grateful they shared their stories with us, and we look forward to seeing where their ideas, confidence and curiosity take them next.

Congratulations, Jahniya, Nicole and Simone. We’re proud of you.