Spring 2021

Impact of Planned Giving

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Spring 2021

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A multitude of ways to give. Some may surprise you!

Former Gillings staff member Rebecca Mabe earmarked her planned gift for the Michel A. Ibrahim Fellowship, which provides $10,000 annually to support graduate students across the School. Mabe was the School’s assistant dean for business and later became associate dean for administration.

“Public health means so much because of the work that all the different public health fields do, and because I worked in administration, I wasn’t wed to a particular department,” she says. “But graduate students were the ones I saw and worked with on a daily basis, and I want my gift to support students to be our future public health professionals.”

Steve (MS ’82, PhD ’83 Biostatistics) and Sylvia (MPH ’81 Biostatistics) Snapinn’s planned gift supports students in the biostatistics department, where they met. Through their estate, the Snapinns will support the Innovation in Biostatistics Premier Fellowship to cover tuition and related expenses and a stipend for living expenses for a biostatistics student in financial need.

“There are not many careers where you can apply your skills to developing new drugs to improve public health,” said Steve Snapinn, now a consultant at Seattle-Quilcene Biostatistics after retiring from Amgen, having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than three decades. “We wanted to give that opportunity to another student who might not have that opportunity to afford it otherwise.”

Retired public health microbiologist Sally Liska, who earned a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in the former Department of Parasitology and Laboratory Practice, is using retirement funds and a gift through her estate to create the Gillings Global Health scholarship, which will support international students or students interested in global health. Throughout her career, Liska traveled to roughly 20 African countries to help train public health and clinical lab workers.

“I was lucky enough to have attended UNC on a financially supported program, so I’m not just paying it back by funding a scholarship,” says Liska, whose career included directing public health labs in Orlando, San Francisco and San Jose. “When you come to that age where you have money coming available that you’ve got to use, why not think about giving it to your alma mater to further education?”