Breaking barriers as a 15-year-old PhD student, Alena Analeigh McQuarter hopes to overcome financial barriers with the help of a GoFundMe campaign.

After becoming the youngest American ever accepted into medical school, Grio Awards recipient Alena Analeigh McQuarter is facing a challenge many students know all too well — a lack of financial support.

In 2022, McQuarter was theGrio Awards Young Icon honoree for her amazing accomplishments in STEM. At just 15 years old, she received her master’s degree in Biology from Arizona State University, where she received the university’s highest honor, the Dean’s Medal. At 13, McQuarter made headlines when she became the youngest person to be accepted into a U.S. medical school and, before that, became the youngest intern with NASA at 12. 

With a passion for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the Fort Worth, Texas native launched The Brown STEM Girl, an organization that connects what she calls other “brainiac” girls of color to mentorship, scholarships, and STEM careers.

“I really want to leave my mark on the world,” McQuarter told Arizona’s 12 News, “and lead a group of girls that know what they can do.”

Now, she’s working towards making change in the medical field, pursuing her PhD in Integrated Biological Sciences with a focus on Inflammation, Immunity, and Immunology at Loma Linda University Medical School in California. 

The experience is amazing. I love school, and being in the lab is pretty much a full-time job,” Alena said in a conversation with theGrio. “It’s doing intense research on various topics, and I’m having a good time figuring out what research I’m doing right now, and being in the lab doing experiments pretty much takes up most of the day … I have classes in between, so I feel like the days [are] extremely demanding [with] six classes and lab, so [it’s] busy, but it’s been an amazing experience.”

While McQuarter has been able to break several glass ceilings early in life, she’s hit some roadblocks on the way, particularly financially. Beyond tuition, being a full-time student attending in-person classes and labs comes with extra costs like housing, transportation for internships, and tutoring services. When the expected annual financial support to cover these costs didn’t come through from the school, Alena and her mother, Daphne McQuarter, were left to pick up the pieces.  

“It is a lot on a parent when you have a child like Alena, who is gifted. She’s 15 and in college with 25, 26, 27-year-olds, and watching her navigate this whole process, it’s a huge financial burden,” Daphne explained. “For me [as her mother], my job is to make sure she doesn’t have the stress of finances [so] she can go to school and do what she loves.”  

As a single mother, Daphne knows firsthand how stressful and confusing it can be for students and parents to navigate the financial aspects of higher education. Though she’s there to advocate for her daughter, who is already swamped with the rigorous academic requirements of her program, Daphne can only imagine how difficult these situations might be for students without an advocate. To help ease her daughter’s financial burden, Alena’s mother launched a GoFundMe campaign. 

“Sometimes, I may not hear from her until the next day because she’s working or she’s studying,” Daphne said, explaining her daughter’s intense schedule. “It’s very demanding. So for her to have the extra help and support means a lot [so] she can focus on her classes and not worry about everything else, because when you’re worried about everything else, it affects everything else in your life.” 

Ultimately, Alena understands the importance of not only building representation within STEM fields, but also that students like her receive the necessary support to strive in these programs. Having benefited from the power of crowdfunding in the past, the young prodigy knows from experience how financial freedom can be linked to academic success.

“I think it’s really important that people from all communities, especially girls of color, you know, have that chance to go into the world and show their interest in STEM,” she told theGrio. “[Launching a previous] GoFundMe really helped me be more relaxed on the funding side. I [was able to] pursue my dreams in STEM and be able to push the limits and graduate early because I knew that everything else was taken care of. What’s really utmost [is that] there [are] no obstacles to being able to go out and pursue your dreams.”