Voya Honors Baltimore Principal with Second-Place Unsung Heroes Program Award
WINDSOR, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), a leading provider of retirement plans for educators, announced today that Deidre Rabuck, an assistant principal at the Kennedy Krieger School: Fairmount Campus in Baltimore, won the second-place grant award in the company’s annual Voya Unsung Heroes program.
Through this effort, Voya awards $2,000 grants to 100 K–12 educators across the country each year to support their innovative and creative teaching ideas. Voya also selects three top winners to receive additional funds. In its 20-plus years, the program has awarded over $5 million in grants to roughly 2,000 educators across the U.S.
As the second-place winner, Rabuck will receive $10,000 in addition to the $2,000 grant — bringing her total financial award to $12,000. This money will be used to help bring “Fairmount News Station” to life at the Kennedy Krieger School: Fairmount Campus.
“At Voya, we are focused on making a difference as we serve our clients and customers, and we’re thrilled to recognize our nation’s teachers who go above and beyond to inspire today’s students,” said Heather Lavallee, president of Tax-Exempt Markets at Voya Financial. “For more than 20 years, our Unsung Heroes program has empowered educators like Deidre to bring their innovative ideas to life, and we are honored to recognize her as our 2018 second-place winner.”
Rabuck’s innovative teaching idea, “Fairmount News Station,” focuses on giving the students the Kennedy Krieger School: Fairmount Campus who have learning, behavioral and physical disabilities the opportunity to write, produce and star in the school’s morning announcement “news series.” With a goal of mirroring an authentic, local news broadcast, students will create content, prepare written scripts, design background scenes, record the broadcast and deliver the finished newscasts to the school’s classrooms.
“The Kennedy Krieger School Fairmount Campus is thankful for Voya’s support and recognition of Deidre Rabuck’s vision for a student run broadcast studio,” said Sandi Jenkins, principal of the Kennedy Krieger School: Fairmount Campus. “The studio will allow our students to work on writing, public speaking, executive functioning and many other important skills. With Voya’s support and Deidre’s drive, energy and expertise, our students will have the opportunity to actively participate in broadcasts throughout the school year.”
With the Voya grant, Rabuck plans to purchase the necessary equipment to accommodate the various disabilities and diverse learning styles of the students as each broadcast will involve varying complexities. This will provide students with opportunities to move outside of their comfort zones, work cooperatively and master a variety of new skills — all proficiencies that are especially important among students with disabilities to gain confidence and life experience.
To learn more about this year’s winning projects, as well as those from previous years, visit the Unsung Heroes website at Voya.com/UnsungHeroes. Applications for the 2019 Voya Unsung Heroes awards are currently being accepted through the website until April 30, 2019.
Unsung Heroes is part of Voya’s broader efforts to empower teachers to become leaders by promoting their careers, recognizing high-achieving accomplishments, providing training opportunities and offering financial support to achieve their goals.
About Voya Financial ®
Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), helps Americans plan, invest and protect their savings — to get ready to retire better. Serving the financial needs of approximately 14.3 million individual and institutional customers in the United States, Voya is a Fortune 500 company that had $8.6 billion in revenue in 2017. The company had $543 billion in total assets under management and administration as of September 30, 2018. With a clear mission to make a secure financial future possible — one person, one family, one institution at a time — Voya’s vision is to be America’s Retirement Company®. Certified as a “Great Place to Work” by the Great Place to Work® Institute, Voya is equally committed to conducting business in a way that is socially, environmentally, economically and ethically responsible. Voya has been recognized as one of the 2018 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute; one of the 2018 World’s Most Admired Companies by Fortune magazine; as a member of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index; and as a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion” on the Disability Equality Index by Disability:IN. For more information, visit voya.com. Follow Voya Financial on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @Voya.
Media:
Laura Maulucci
Voya Financial
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