Spherion Presents Second Annual Sandy Mazur Scholarship

This year, the scholarship is awarded to two graduating high school students who best represent the qualities of excellence, leadership and passion that Sandy put forth during her distinguished 18-year career at Spherion. Sandy Mazur has built a legacy of “going the extra mile,” inspiring the Spherion network of franchisees to donate funds in her name. Each year Spherion franchisees from across the system donate to the scholarship fund, which will award the winners with $2,500 in scholarship money to be applied to their school of choice for the upcoming fall semester.

“Our team was incredibly inspired by the many applicants who spent their time and energy supporting their communities,” said Mazur. “As we round out the second year of the scholarship, I’m proud to have established a high value of community and give back that inspired franchisees to donate and award these students with a scholarship.”

The Spherion Franchise Community, led by franchisees Michael Chalmers and Beth DeLaney, coordinated with nonprofit The Richland County Foundation – which disburses grants for charitable organizations – to review hundreds of applicants and choose the finalists. From there, a group of representatives from the Spherion Franchise Community including Chalmers, DeLaney and Mazur chose the winners. With the names and locations removed, the group of five reviewed the applicants and, solely based on their merits, selected Caleb Qiu and Lovenya Perry as the 2021 scholarship recipients.

“Caleb and Lovenya both demonstrate a blend of the many distinguishing characteristics that Sandy possesses,” said DeLaney, owner of Spherion Mid-Ohio. “We’ve been inspired by Sandy’s legacy and are delighted to be able to recognize the achievements of Caleb and Lovenya as they move towards furthering their skills with higher education.”

In addition to volunteering regularly to teach middle schoolers basic mechanical skills, coding and physics principles for the last four years, Qiu led weekly STEM workshops to help students in underserved communities. Qiu taught himself IOS and Android programming languages to create an app, CrossedPaths. The free app provided COVID-19 Exposure Notifications without ads on both the Google and Apple App Stores. Qiu plans to utilize his impressive talents at The University of Michigan this fall where he will study Computer Science.

Building on her extensive commitment to the community, Perry joined both Girl Scouts and Future Business Leaders of America. Perry inspired other young leaders in those organizations, volunteered weekly as a bake sale coordinator with her local church and also supported her mom’s business. Setting a high bar for herself, Perry volunteered more than 5,000 hours of community service in the last four years. A recent graduate from Rantoul Township High School, Perry plans to attend Millikin University to study Biology in the fall semester.

Spherion brandishes the power of local through a network of independent and empowered franchise owners. They enrich their communities through connecting and facilitating employment opportunities every day — and when they’re successful together, their investments flow back into the neighborhoods where they live and work. The power of Spherion is in its local roots.