Grab your lunch and join us for this Winter Park Professional Women webinar. WPPW gives women the opportunity to not only cultivate relationships with peers, but also hear from inspiring speakers. Topics include personal branding, business solutions, relevant community issues, sales techniques, and many more.
Zoom Panelist: Susan Allen Johnson, Founder and President of Support Our Scholars Speaker Topic: The Power of Positive Impact
Susan Johnson of Winter Park is the Founder and President of Support Our Scholars (SOS), established in 2006. This organization is committed to educating brilliant young women with great financial need. SOS current has 51 young women in colleges around the country including Harvard, Rice, Carnegie Mellon and have 44 with under graduate degrees and 7 are currently in graduate school.
When she was 27 years old, Susan founded Jake Allen Center and Jake Allen Pre-school for deaf blind. Susan was inspired to start this organization because her son Jake was born both deaf and blind. She served as Executive Director of Jake Allen Center from 1983 – 1991. This was a one-of-a-kind school that provided an alternative education for deaf blind children who were failing in the traditional public-school system. The school and its curriculum were featured in numerous educational publications including Family Circle Magazine and was featured as the cover story in Florida Magazine. Susan ran the school for nine years and built the Center to a $1-million operating budget with 50 employees that helped 16 severely disabled children from all over the state. Susan remains a strong advocate for blind multi-handicap individuals and a source of strength for families facing a lifetime of caring for, and loving, a child with special needs.