At the start of its “Million Dollar Año,” the college-access nonprofit Scholars Latino Initiative (SLI) has welcomed an alum to its board of directors.
SLI, which with the support of its community in 2026 is poised to pass the $1 million mark in total financial awards to students since its incorporation in 2012, has announced Jennyfer Hernandez Austria of Chesterfield as its newest board member. The board now includes 13 members with backgrounds in secondary and higher education, business, law, and finance.
“I am thrilled that Jennyfer is joining SLI in this capacity,” said board chair Fawn-Amber Montoya, Ph.D., a professor of history at James Madison University. “Her personal and professional experiences, particularly as an advocate and SLI scholar, will strengthen the impact of our mission.”
SLI’s mission is to support Latino/a/x high school students with college access through rigorous academic challenge, leadership development, scholarships, and supportive mentorships. Offering college access opportunities in Harrisonburg, Richmond, and Winchester, Virginia, SLI is a collaboration both with high school and university faculty, staff, and students to offer out-of-school programs for SLI scholars, and with donors to create SLI college scholarships, tech grants, and other financial assistance opportunities for SLI scholars.
Privately funded by the SLI community of support, since 2012 SLI has served 223 scholars (67 current and 156 alumni) and awarded students more than $917,000. SLI alumni have attended 29 colleges and universities.
“I’ve known Jenny from high school, through college, and into and beyond law school,” said SLI founder and program director Peter Iver Kaufman, who holds the George Matthews & Virginia Brinkley Modlin Chair in Leadership Studies, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond. “Three words: persistence, passion, and compassion. And all are contagious; Jenny just moves people to believe in their own possibilities and to realize them.”
Hernandez Austria “did not see a pathway to college” until learning about and joining SLI in Richmond in high school. She went on to graduate from the University of Richmond in 2015 with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and international studies with a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and in 2023 she completed her Juris Doctor at the University of Richmond School of Law, where she was the lead articles editor of the Richmond Public Interest Law Review and a board member of the Public Interest Law Association.
A worker-owner of the Virginia Language Justice Collective, she has also worked or interned in a public defender’s office, for the Virginia Poverty Law Center, and with two immigration law firms.
“All of my life trajectory – none of it would have happened if SLI hadn’t been there for me,” she said. “I want to be there for other people just as SLI helped me, so that my community can continue to thrive and more students can have the same opportunities that I had.”
The daughter of dentists in Mexico City who moved their family to Richmond when she was age 11, Hernandez Austria saw her parents take on manual labor, make sacrifices to support education, and take risks on behalf of their family. She thrived on affirmation from her teachers and honed her English skills by watching the Gilmore Girls, whose character Rory inspired her to go to college even though without immigration documentation her options were limited.
When her high school homeroom teacher recommended her to Kaufman, Hernandez Austria seized the opportunity “to maybe be able to make it to college.” She “loved” SLI, including the assignments to research and write about different topics each month. One essay that stands out to her was about the ballast water contamination.
“All we need to do,” she recalls thinking, “is just pay a little bit of attention to what we’re doing.”
She realized during those assignments that she had a passion for supporting people facing struggles, including those she knew firsthand. When Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was implemented during the summer after her first year at the University of Richmond, Hernandez Austria began crying because she knew it would “change my life,” she recalls thinking.
Being a Dreamer eased the way for her to get a driver’s license, a job, and internships. She began acting on her passions, taking on activist roles and even becoming known as “the immigration girl” for distributing information and promoting petitions. In 2016 she married a man she had met years before while interning for a political campaign, and in 2020 she became a citizen.
SLI board members can serve up to two consecutive three-year terms.
