2026-2027 Student Leadership

Our Resident Assistant: Yonu Akanji

Hello! My name is Yonu Akanji, and I am excited to serve as the Shriver LLC Residential Assistant (RA) this upcoming year after being a mentee and peer mentor over the past two years. I am a Psychology B.S. major on the clinical psychology track, with minors in Biology and Public Health. I am from Anne Arundel County, but I was originally born and raised in Nigeria until I was eight years old.

I am very passionate about service. For the past two years, I have volunteered with Retriever Essentials, our on-campus food/ essential needs pantry, and I have served as a student leader there for one year. During my freshman year, I briefly volunteered with Choice College Night, a program that exposes youth to higher education opportunities. I also volunteer as a teacher with B’More Clubhouse, a nonprofit organization off campus that supports adults living with mental illness. On the floor, I enjoy connecting with everyone, being a familiar face, and planning fun events. Outside of that, I am also interested in research. I work as a research assistant in the ACED Lab on a project that studies stress and emotional regulation strategies. I am also an editor for the UMBC Review, our undergraduate research journal.

In my free time, I enjoy watching dramas, reading, crocheting, cooking, and spending time with friends. I am looking forward to helping the peer mentors build this new cohort. I am here to support you all throughout the year, so please feel free to reach out anytime.

Our 6 Peer Mentors

Hello friends, my name is Blessing Lawson, and I am so excited to meet you all. I am an international student from Togo, a junior majoring in Biosciences with a minor in Psychology (pre-med track). By the time I serve as your peer mentor I will be a senior.
In my first semester at Shriver, I volunteered with Retriever Essentials, helping with the pantry to support equal access to basic essentials for all students on campus. My main volunteer site was College Night, where I talked with mostly high school students about higher education, career goals, and their future plans. We also played sports and games, which made the experience fun and meaningful.
This semester, I am  continuing with College Night and will be volunteering  with UMROI, helping patients with feeding and physical therapy.
Some of my interests are art, working with children and music. In my free time, I enjoy swimming with my friends in the UMBC swimming club, singing, going to Agape Christian Fellowship, watching Netflix, and filming aesthetic study vlogs that I sometimes share on social media.
Coming into Shriver as a freshman or transfer student truly makes your first semester smoother. You immediately join a community of students who are just like you, plus older students who support you and help your transition feel natural. It’s a guaranteed way to build your network, be yourself, and find your people.

Hii everyone! My name is Maya Miller (she/her), and I am from Baltimore County, Maryland. I am a rising sophomore double majoring in social work and psychology, and I aspire to become a child welfare social worker one day! As a freshman, I served at Elementors! a service site hosted at two elementary schools, Catonsville Elementary and Relay Elementary, where I was able to support students both individually and in group class settings. Outside of Shriver, I was a member of the Maryland Public Service Scholars Program and am currently involved with Sisterhood, a student organization dedicated to supporting women and femmes of color on campus. In my free time, I can usually be found around campus, at the RAC for group fitness yoga classes, or spending time with my friends. Some of my interests are crocheting, baking, and watching Pixar + Disney movies.

This year, I will be serving as one of your peer mentors and I truly cannot wait to see what the next cohort of Shriver LLC mentees will bring to both the floor and the UMBC community as a whole. Best of luck & I cannot wait to meet you all! C:

Hi everyone! My name is Wyatt Prosperie (he/him) and I am a sophomore Computer Engineering major on the electronic systems track. I am a native Maryland resident, born and raised. I’m very excited to be a part of the Shriver center this year as a peer mentor! I’ve also met some of my close friends through Shriver, and I hope you all can take advantage of being a part of a community. Being apart of Shriver has been an extremely beneficial opportunity for me; last year I volunteered at Arbutus Middle for Creative Coders (teaching elementary/middle school students the basics of robotics) my first semester and at Sister’s Academy for Chess Club (teaching middle schoolers how to be better at chess) my second semester. I always enjoy tutoring and helping people learn more, especially in and about STEM fields. I’ve done robotics my whole life and it’s something I’m very passionate about. I hope to do more instructional work through volunteering as well as working in a lab at UMBC this upcoming semester! Aside from academics, I also love folding origami, building model kits, going to the gym, playing card games, and gaming. I can’t wait to meet everyone, and I hope you have a good time in Shriver!

Hiya! I’m Marcy(she/her), and I can’t wait to be your peer mentor! I’m a sophomore sociology major, trying to figure out what career path I can help others the best in. Last year I did my volunteering at Paul’s Place, a combination clothes drive and soup kitchen. It was a lot of work, a lot of fun, and honestly probably the most fulfilling volunteer site. I love a whole host of things, I’m a professional photographer, an amateur writer, and a failed rodeo clown(despite common assumptions, clown college entrance exams are no joke). I love manga and anime, video games, tons of film and tv, legos, model building, I make costumes and props, really if the requirement wasn’t a picture of me I’d have made my photo just a panorama of my room. My favorite holiday is (stereotypically) Halloween, my favorite food is fried rice, my favorite show is Devilman Crybaby(I wrote my college essay on Devilman), my favorite game is a toss up between Neon White and Borderlands 3, and my favorite quote is, “You’re the only person on Earth qualified to be you”.  Below that more surface level stuff, a core aspect of me is compassion. I want the best for everyone around me, because everyone can improve if they have someone who cares for them. A key reason I joined Shriver is my internal sense of altruism, and the desire to provide a sort of justice through service. Oh I also did theatre, in like the cool stage crew way not the Every-Song-From-Hamilton-Memorized way.