When Alan Fournier, BSET ’83, Hon. ’10, created the Fournier Family Boston Public Schools Graduate Scholarship in 2012, he hoped to help underprivileged but promising high school students translate their talents into college degrees. In August, Cliff Freeman, CIS ’16, and Billy Ortiz, MET ’16, graduated from Wentworth as the first Fournier scholars.
Freeman found Wentworth through a career fair at his Dorchester, Mass., high school, but would not have considered college without the Fournier 
Scholarship. “Even if you added up all of my family’s income, I probably wouldn’t have been able to go to college without the scholarship,” he says.
Ortiz says Fournier has served as an inspiration to him. “I’m incredibly grateful to Alan for making my education possible,” says Ortiz. “Seeing what he has made of his Wentworth degree has inspired me to reach for that kind of success, so that someday I might be able to give back the way he has.”
Thanks to Wentworth’s co-op program, Freeman and Ortiz have significant work experience under their belts as they prepare to enter the workforce. Ortiz hopes to start a career in manufacturing, inspired by his involvement with the manufacturing center on campus. Freeman says he’d like to “write his own job description at Google or Facebook.” He is currently enrolled in Wentworth’s Master of Science in Technology Management program.
“Wentworth has given me direction and helped me determine what I want to do with my life,” says Freeman. “This scholarship made that possible for me.”
–Greg Abazorius and Jason Rubin
