April 28, 2015

Scholarships for the Woman One program will now be raised to $100,000 over four years of medical study. The scholarships are presented by the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership of Drexel University College of Medicine and are awarded annually to women from underrepresented populations seeking to become physicians.  The announcement was made during an event honoring the 2015 Woman One Award recipient Lynne Honickman.

“This program began over a decade ago at a level of $60,000 per scholar,” said Lynn Yeakel, director, Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership. “Reaching the $100,000 mark was always a goal, and the generosity of the Honickman family and so many other loyal supporters of the next generation of women physicians made it all happen.”

Woman One Scholars, after graduation, are committed to practicing medicine in underserved areas. This year, the Woman One program raised more than $500,000, bringing the total funds raised to $3 million since its founding 12 years ago. The program has supported scholarships for 27 current and former Scholars in Drexel University College of Medicine.

Tribute to Community Leadership

At a reception on April 27, 2015, at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, Lynne Honickman was honored with the 2015 Woman One Award as a tribute to her community leadership.

In 1989 Honickman founded The Honickman Foundation, dedicated to the support of projects that promote spiritual growth, creativity, education and social change. The foundation partnered with Project HOME and Comcast a decade ago to build The Honickman Learning Center Comcast Technology Labs in North Central Philadelphia. Currently, the center serves more than 375 children and 925 adults each year.

The Honickman Foundation has also established two national book prizes, one in poetry with the American Poetry Review (its 18th book coming soon) and one in photography with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, now in its 7th book competition.

Formally trained as a writer and artist, Honickman is an activist for the arts and for pressing social issues. Her core values are derived from her family and her Jewish heritage – a legacy that values family, hard work and civic responsibility. She and her husband, Harold, have two adult children and four grandchildren.

One of the original six programs to be designated a National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women's Health and Leadership helps carry out the College’s commitment to women's health and women’s leadership in medicine and science. Its core initiatives include: the International Center for Executive Leadership in Academics, with its acclaimed Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women; the Legacy Center, which preserves and protects the largest collection of archival material on the history of women in medicine, much of which comes from one of the College’s predecessor institutions; the Woman One Award and Scholarship Fund; and Vision 2020, a national initiative to achieve women’s economic and social equality.