Pouring Back Into Dillard: Honoring a Mentor and Investing in the Next Generation of Public Health Leaders
By Glenis M. Scott, Jr., MPH
Dillard University 2026 Top 40 Under 40 Honoree
There is something powerful about returning to the places that helped shape us—not simply to remember what we received, but to ask what we can now give back.
For Glenis M. Scott, Jr., MPH, being selected as a Dillard University 2026 Top 40 Under 40 honoree is one of those full-circle moments.
A New Orleans native and 2016 Dillard public health graduate, Scott has built his career around community health, HIV prevention, mentorship, and creating opportunities for young people. But behind that work is another story: the story of a mentor who saw possibility in a young public health student and chose to invest in it.
Now, Scott is using this recognition to honor that legacy by investing in the students coming behind him.
“As Dillard prepared me, I want to pour back into the institution that poured so much into me.”
More Than an Honor
Dillard University's Top 40 Under 40 recognizes alumni making an impact through their professions, leadership, and service. Honorees also commit to raising or contributing at least $2,000 in support of the university.
Scott is dedicating his $2K in 2 Challenge campaign to Dillard's public health program in honor of his late mentor and former department chair, Dr. Wodajo Welldaregay.
For Scott, that choice is deeply personal.
Dr. Wodajo was a pillar not only within the Dillard community but within New Orleans public health. His mentorship extended well beyond lectures, assignments, and graduation requirements.
He cared about the people his students were becoming.
Scott remembers an educator who wanted to know what his students hoped to accomplish, what obstacles stood between them and those goals, and what he could do to help.
That relationship did not end when Scott graduated.
When Scott pursued admission to Tulane University's Master of Public Health program, Dr. Wodajo helped pay for his GRE preparation courses. He wrote letters of recommendation. He offered guidance. And even after Scott left Dillard, he remained a source of encouragement and
direction.
Those actions mattered.
Sometimes the difference between someone imagining a future and actually stepping into it is another person saying, in word and deed, I believe you belong there.
Mentorship Creates a Ripple
Dr. Wodajo's investment did more than help one student advance academically. It helped establish a model of leadership that Scott would eventually carry into his own work.
Over the past four years, through his work with CrescentCare and the Sexual Health, Education & Rights (S.H.E.R.) Lab, Scott has helped provide internships, volunteer experiences, mentorship, and professional development opportunities to more than 100 young people, ranging from high school students to graduate students.
Those students have gained practical experience in outreach, HIV prevention, community health, research, and service while contributing to efforts to end the HIV epidemic.
The connection between those experiences and Scott's own mentorship is not accidental.
“A major reason I make room for students and mentor emerging professionals is because someone made room for me.”
That may be one of the most important lessons contained within Scott's story.
Mentorship does not end with the person being mentored.
Done well, it multiplies.
One person opens a door. The person who walks through it eventually learns how to hold that door open for someone else. Over time, what began as an individual act of generosity becomes part of a community's infrastructure.
Giving Young People a Place to Begin
One example of that philosophy in action is the Prevention Education for Early Risk-Reduction in Students (PEERS) youth program, which Scott created to help high school students develop as peer health educators.
Through paid summer opportunities, young people participate in planning, promoting, and implementing outreach events while developing the skills needed to discuss sexual health with their peers.
According to the S.H.E.R. Lab's program documentation, 58 students participated across the 2023–2025 PEERS cohorts.
But the significance of that number is larger than 58 summer experiences.
These are young people being introduced to public health not simply as something studied in a classroom, but as something they can do.
They get to see themselves as educators.
As advocates.
As researchers.
As professionals.
As people capable of changing the health of their communities.
Some of the students Scott and his colleagues have supported have continued their education,
entered public health careers, and even returned as members of staff.
That is what a pipeline looks like when it becomes personal.
Public Health Happens in Community
Scott's work has also extended beyond traditional health programming.
He founded NOLA SHAAD Week, organized CrescentCare's Black Health Summit, and helped bring community partners together through Steppers for Health, an effort that grew from the New Orleans Regional AIDS Planning Council.
There is a common thread running through these projects: public health works best when it meets people within the cultures, relationships, traditions, and communities that already give their lives meaning.
Health education does not have to exist only in clinics.
Prevention does not have to begin with an appointment.
Professional development does not have to wait until someone has already earned a graduate degree.
Community itself can become a classroom.
And when students participate in that work alongside experienced professionals and community partners, they learn something that cannot be fully reproduced in a textbook: public health is ultimately about relationships.
Trust matters.
Listening matters.
Culture matters.
Showing up matters.
And investing in people matters.
Those were lessons Scott experienced under Dr. Wodajo's mentorship, and they continue to appear in the way he approaches his own work.
Why Supporting HBCU Public Health Programs Matters
Scott's campaign also points toward a larger question.
Who will become the next generation of public health leaders—and what are we willing to invest to help them get there?
Public health degree programs at historically Black colleges and universities occupy an important place in that future. They prepare students to examine health inequities, understand the social conditions shaping health, conduct research, design prevention strategies, work alongside communities, and build systems capable of responding to complex health challenges.
For New Orleans, that work carries particular importance.
The professionals being trained today may become tomorrow's epidemiologists, researchers, prevention specialists, community health workers, program directors, advocates, policymakers, educators, and nonprofit leaders.
But developing that workforce requires more than telling young people that opportunities exist.
It requires institutions capable of preparing them.
It requires mentors willing to guide them.
It requires organizations willing to host them.
And it requires financial resources.
Dillard's public health program, now housed within its School of Population and Health Sciences, is part of that ecosystem.
Scott's campaign is therefore about more than meeting a fundraising goal. It is an invitation to participate in a cycle of investment.
Someone invested in him.
He invested in others.
Now he is asking others to help make that same possibility available to students he may never meet.
What Does It Mean to Pour Back?
Giving back to an institution does not have to take only one form.
Alumni can mentor.
Professionals can host interns.
Organizations can create experiential learning opportunities.
Community leaders can make introductions.
Researchers can invite students into projects.
People can write recommendations, review résumés, share professional networks, speak to classes,
or simply answer the phone when a young person is trying to figure out what comes next.
Those actions matter.
But financial support matters too.
Programs cannot create opportunities from goodwill alone. Scholarships, student experiences,
faculty resources, programming, professional development, and community engagement require tangible investment.
Scott's challenge asks supporters to see giving not simply as a donation to an institution, but as an investment in people.
Perhaps somewhere at Dillard today is another student who has not yet discovered what they are capable of.
Perhaps that student needs a mentor.
Perhaps they need an internship.
Perhaps they need someone to tell them that graduate school is possible.
Perhaps they need the kind of support Dr. Wodajo once gave Glenis Scott.
We cannot know exactly where that investment will lead.
That is part of what makes it powerful.
Carrying a Mentor Forward
There is another way to think about legacy.
Legacy is not simply having your name remembered.
Sometimes legacy is watching something you gave another person continue moving through the world after you are gone.
Dr. Wodajo's influence can be seen in Scott's career, certainly. But it can also be seen in the students Scott has mentored, the young people who participated in PEERS, the interns who received their first meaningful professional opportunity, and the emerging public health professionals who were encouraged to keep going.
They may never have known Scott's mentor.
Yet they have been touched by what he started.
That is the extraordinary mathematics of mentorship.
One person's investment can become another person's career. That career can create opportunities for dozens of others. Those people can go on to serve thousands.
The original act keeps traveling.
Join Glenis in Pouring Back Into Dillard
Scott is inviting family, friends, colleagues, community partners, fellow Bleu Devils, public health professionals, New Orleanians, and supporters everywhere to join him in celebrating his Dillard University 2026 Top 40 Under 40 recognition by supporting his campaign.
If his work has touched you, your organization, or your community—or if you simply believe that the next generation of public health professionals deserves the opportunity to learn, lead, and serve—this is an opportunity to invest alongside him.
And if giving financially is not possible right now, sharing the campaign matters too. Someone within your network may be looking for exactly this kind of opportunity to support education, public health, HBCUs, mentorship, or New Orleans.
Together, we can honor Dr. Wodajo Welldaregay not only by remembering what he did, but by continuing it.
We can help another student discover what is possible.
We can create another internship.
We can encourage another emerging professional.
We can open another door.
And perhaps, years from now, someone who walks through that door will turn around and hold it open for the person behind them.
That is how mentorship becomes legacy.
That is how community investment becomes generational.
That is how we pour back.
Support Glenis' Top 40 Under 40 Campaign
Help Glenis M. Scott, Jr., MPH reach his $2K in 2 Challenge goal and support the next generation of public health leaders at Dillard University.
Stay connected with Glenis and share his campaign with your networks.
Fair Dillard, Forever.
From the Crown Legacy Program
At the Crown Legacy Program, stories like Glenis' speak directly to what we mean when we talk about legacy.
Legacy is not merely what someone accomplishes. It is what those accomplishments make possible for someone else.
We celebrate Glenis' recognition as a Dillard University 2026 Top 40 Under 40 honoree, his commitment to developing emerging public health leaders, and his decision to use this moment not simply to celebrate how far he has traveled, but to reach back toward the institution and mentor who helped him begin.
Congratulations, Glenis—and thank you for reminding us that sometimes the most meaningful way to honor the people who poured into us is to become someone willing to pour into others.
Joseph Santiago,
Executive Director
Crown Legacy Program
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