When Gabby Maxwell sat down to write her college application essays, she didn’t have to search far for material. Her experiences with the Ryan Nece Foundation had given her something more valuable than a resume line. They gave her a story worth telling.
We’re sharing excerpts from Gabby’s own words here, with her permission, because they capture something outsiders rarely get to see: What our students carry with them when they leave our programs and step into the next chapter of their lives.
Finding Community Across School Lines
For Gabby, one of the most meaningful gifts of the Ryan Nece Foundation’s Student Service Program was something deceptively simple: Meeting other students.
In one of her college supplementals, she wrote:
“With no social media for almost the entirety of high school, it’s been difficult to meet kids from other schools. But, volunteering with the Ryan Nece Foundation has provided me with the opportunity to do just that. The foundation has a two-year program for select students from Tampa & St. Pete who meet regularly and serve in our community. I’ve loved collaborating with my peers who also have a passion for community betterment, and I’ve found volunteering alongside them and getting to know them through our work together very fulfilling.”
That’s the Student Service Program in a nutshell. It is a cohort of young people brought together not by geography or circumstance, but by a shared commitment to their community. For students like Gabby, those relationships become the foundation for everything else.
Asheville: A Week That Changed Everything
In the summer before her senior year, Gabby traveled to Asheville, NC, through the Ryan Nece Foundation to provide hurricane relief in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastating floods. It was the kind of experience that words struggle to capture, but Gabby did a remarkable job trying, across multiple essays.
In another college application supplemental, she described what she witnessed:
“This experience pushed me mentally and physically, as I witnessed the horrific effects of natural disasters while laboring in the summer heat. But, it also taught me about the power of resilience and selflessness when facing hardship. I saw grown men squeezing into 18-inch crawlspaces, volunteers driving two hours each way to reach their work site, and volunteers pushing wheelbarrows up and down the steep North Carolina hills.”
Paired with All Hands and Hearts (a volunteer-led disaster relief organization) Gabby and her Ryan Nece Foundation cohort were tasked with rebuilding homes from the ground up. As she described it in one college essay:
“I cut and installed drywall in a house devastated from flooding, landscaped, and helped the Habitat for Humanity team build the framework of a home for a displaced family. I learned many construction skills, like using a hammer and drill, mulching and gardening, and cutting drywall with a jigsaw.”
And in true Gabby fashion, she found the humor in it too. In another college application supplemental:
“After referring to a drill as a ‘screwdriver machine,’ I think the All Hands and Hearts crew realized that I wasn’t a construction expert.”
Building More Than Houses
What Gabby kept returning to in each writing part of her applications (the through-line across every school, every prompt) was a single, powerful insight she arrived at in Asheville. Working alongside long-term volunteers from across the globe, ranging in age from 20 to 70, from Australia, South Africa, and dozens of U.S. states, she discovered something about what service really means.
As she wrote for two college application supplementals:
“Installing drywall with a volunteer from Minnesota, I realized that we were not only building a house for a displaced family, but we were building trust with one another.”
“This experience opened my eyes to the needs beyond my community, and taught me that when people share a goal, regardless of their backgrounds, they can truly make the world a better place.”
That’s the heart of servant leadership. It’s not just about the task completed, but the community built in the doing of it. It’s what we try to cultivate in every student who walks through our programs. And in Gabby, it took root.
What She Carries Forward
Gabby’s essays don’t end in Asheville. They look forward: To college clubs she wants to join, causes she wants to champion, communities she wants to build on college campuses across the country. Climate advocacy, music therapy, urban gardening, disaster relief… The experiences she had through the Ryan Nece Foundation didn’t just give her stories. They gave her direction.
She leaves our program this spring as exactly the kind of young person we hope to develop: Curious, compassionate, and committed to something bigger than herself.
Gabby, we’re so proud of you, and we can’t wait to see what you build next!
