Supporting Diversity to Support Learning

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Front, from left: Ellen Castruccio, mother Jane, father Louis. Back, from left: Lizzy (Castruccio) Kim, and Genny Salamon.

Genny (Castruccio) Salamon ’92 and her family turned a difficult year of lockdowns and racial injustice into hope for the future, funding a student scholarship.

“I was at home [during lockdowns] thinking about all of it. I was talking with my family and with Holy Cross friends and wondering, what could we do?” Genny says. “Given what was going on around the world, but also in our own community in Los Angeles, I wanted to do something.”

The scholarship will support a Holy Cross student from an underserved area in Los Angeles, the Castruccios’ hometown. Genny will support the scholarship alongside her parents, Jane and Louis Castruccio; and her sisters, Ellen Castruccio and Lizzy (Castruccio) Kim ’00.

Louis Castruccio is a graduate and trustee of Santa Clara University, and Ellen is a 1991 graduate of Boston College.

While the family’s scholarship will certainly benefit each student recipient, they also feel diversity is important for the Holy Cross community. “Having students from different geographic areas and diverse backgrounds will help the school and the students who are there,” Genny says. “That’s part of learning — meeting different people who have different ideas and perspectives. You learn from that and then are a better decision-maker yourself, when you see other perspectives.”

When she reached out to Holy Cross about creating this scholarship, Genny said she had no idea how the process worked, but that the College was there to guide her every step of the way. “Anyone can support Holy Cross, and there are people there to help walk you through the process if you've never done something like this before,” she says.

A philosophy major at Holy Cross, Genny is now a lawyer who works for a Justice on the California Court of Appeal, and she and her husband Noah have three sons. Even though she lives on the opposite coast from Mount St. James, Genny says she thinks about Holy Cross often.

“The interpersonal support that I found at Holy Cross, it’s instant. It has this community feel that I benefitted from and continue to benefit from, and I hope the same for the recipients of these funds,” Genny says. “I hope it gives the recipients a community and support system. I think that helps raise people up.”

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