2026 Scholarship Recipients

Lorena Cardenas is a graphic design student at California College of the Arts (CCA). Originally from Cuba, she immigrated to the U.S. in 2016 and grew up in Miami, where she attended Miami Dade College. There, she served as Vice President of Service and Fellowship for Phi Theta Kappa, and led community service efforts that shaped her belief in design’s power to connect people and communities. Her path into design was sparked by a Phi Theta Kappa leader whose community flyers showed her how thoughtful visual choices can make people feel welcome. Lorena dreams of working as a designer or art director in entertainment and fashion, creating movie posters and editorial layouts for platforms like Vogue and Netflix. But she hopes to begin by designing for nonprofits and small businesses in the Miami community where she grew up.

Steffie Kwong is an architecture student in the five-year B.Arch program at Cal Poly. Her interest in design took root in childhood, building houses in video games and with Legos, and grew during a middle school summer internship with Youth Art Exchange, where she learned architecture and fashion design fundamentals from working professionals and built a capstone project presented publicly at SFMOMA. The experience of drafting a design from her imagination and physically constructing it, guided by a passionate mentor architect, confirmed that architecture was the field she wanted to pursue. Steffie attended Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Her dream job is to become a Disney Imagineer, designing fantasy-based theme-park architecture rather than traditional structures. Drawn to the idea of making “magic” real, she hopes to use design to help families create meaningful shared experiences and build closer bonds through travel and theme parks, a goal shaped by her own wish for more connection growing up.

Kian Serafino is an architecture student in Rice University’s six-year program. He grew up in San Francisco, where experiences like performing taiko drumming at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival and interning at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission shaped his identity and his commitment to giving back to his hometown. His path into design began the summer before high school, when he joined a six-week program at Youth Art Exchange, designing and building an art piece inspired by the Diego Rivera mural at SFMOMA. Working alongside a professional architect, who pushed him to question every material and design choice, Kian learned to see design as a series of intentional decisions rather than instinct alone. That experience led him to study architecture and design at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. He hopes to one day run his own small architecture firm, staying hands-on with every project while leading a team that creates amazing work together.

Zuleyka is an architecture student at California College of the Arts. A graduate of KIPP College Prep in San Francisco, her early passion for design started with illustration, encouraged by a middle school art teacher, before growing into a deeper interest in architecture. She’s driven by a desire to design inclusive and accessible spaces, recognizing how often architecture overlooks people with different physical needs. Zuleyka’s dream is to become a licensed architect, ideally at a firm like SANAA in Tokyo, where she can bring both creativity and technical precision to work that makes a real impact. She’s especially drawn to being part of the process from the earliest design decisions, and hopes to see her own work come to life. Beyond the classroom, she values community: attending a LWBF event and seeing the range of work from our scholars led her to apply to our program.