Throughout the past decade, Simonne Lenseigne ’22 has accomplished significant work overseas with refugees in need. Her story begins with her own experience being evacuated from Turkey in the Summer of 2016, which led to her family encountering Oakcrest as they settled in Virginia. 

“By a miracle only God could orchestrate, and the magnanimity of the Oakcrest administration, they were able to squeeze me into their seventh grade class with only a few weeks left in the summer,” she recalls.

With her Oakcrest education and formation, Simonne founded a charitable organization, Cherubs for Change, helping more than 70 Afghan refugee families in the DMV area. Her passion for this type of charity work led her on a study abroad trip this past year to South Africa, where she volunteered at the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, preparing and connecting refugees with employment opportunities. 

A rising junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Simonne is double majoring in biology and political science. She explains that her Oakcrest education inspired her current field of study. 

“Oakcrest was the first school I attended where STEM courses were a core part of the curriculum, and the teachers were passionate and excited to teach the foundations of life,” Simonne says. “I quickly learned through my science classes that if you’re ever doubting your faith, just look at a cell. The most basic unit of life, and yet the most intricately and perfectly designed, reflects an intelligent Creator.”

She remembers one specific lab in Dr. Kat Hussmann’s AP Biology class when she encountered “buprenorphine”. 

“This strange word would soon go on to change the trajectory of my life,” she said. “We began researching this topic and soon learned that buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist, which is itself an opioid that is used to reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms… After one simple project that was supposed to take a couple weeks, I am now pursuing a lifelong path in pharmaceutical law.” 

Simonne says her vision for her future is to “make an overdose-free America.” 

“I am studying how different pharmaceuticals affect the human body, and the federal and state laws governing drug use, which guide the ongoing conversation of the opioid epidemic in the United States,” she says. “My hope is that I can take my knowledge and research and use it to lobby and pass pro-life laws that protect every human being from the fatal spiral of substance misuse and addiction.”

While a student at Oakcrest, Simonne was actively involved in the Oakcrest theatre productions, both on stage and off in shows such as The Velveteen Rabbit, The Boxcar Children, The Wizard of Oz, and Antigone. She played on the JV volleyball team and served as treasurer on the executive student council. 

Some of her favorite Oakcrest memories include the eighth grade lock-in at the new campus, and Zoom calls and letter writing among her classmates during the COVID-19 shutdown.  

When Simonne looks back at her Oakcrest experience, she is grateful for the liberal arts education that she received, and the formation outside the classroom that shaped her as a young woman. 

As she recently told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on national television, “My parents were fortunate enough to work incredibly hard and make the greatest investment into my life, by providing me with an excellent liberal arts education that fosters both intellectual and spiritual growth. My parents were able to be my primary educators, not by home-schooling me, but by sending me to a school that supports and celebrates what they value most.”