Around Town: Girl Scouts to honor 2 Newport women at leadership event
Girl Scouts of Orange County announced that two executives from Newport Beach will be among six women recognized at the organization’s sixth annual Celebrate Leadership event Oct. 30 at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach.
The honorees, all Girl Scouts alumnae, will be paired with current Girl Scouts at the event.
Those being recognized include Jacqueline Akerblom, managing partner of Grant Thornton LLP’s West Region audit, tax and advisory offices, and Deborah Proctor, president and chief executive of Irvine-based St. Joseph Health.
Akerblom is a certified public accountant and a member of the California Chamber of Commerce, the University of San Diego School of Business dean’s advisory board and the CEO Roundtable at UC Irvine.
Proctor has received several accolades, including Women in Health Administration’s Woman of the Year honor and the Orange County Business Journal’s Women in Business Award. She also was named among Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Women in Healthcare and in Becker’s Hospital Review’s Top Women Hospital and Health Care Leaders to Know.
“The extraordinary women we are honoring come from different industries and followed different paths, but they share one important attribute: They were all Girl Scouts who developed vital leadership skills that contributed to their success, and they are tremendous role models for our female leaders of tomorrow,” Nancy Nygren, chief executive of Girl Scouts of Orange County, said in a statement.
Princeton Review names Vanguard one of Best in the West
The Princeton Review, an education services company, declared Vanguard University in Costa Mesa one of its Best in the West schools in an online feature this month titled “2016 Best Colleges: Region by Region.”
Vanguard received accolades from the Princeton Review for “focusing on students’ personal development and sense of community on campus.”
“We chose Vanguard University and the other outstanding institutions on this list primarily for their excellent academics,” Princeton Review’s Senior Vice President and Publisher Robert Franek said in a statement.
This year’s Best in the West list includes 125 colleges in 15 Western states.
Princeton Review selected the schools after conducting on-site visits and researching data collected from its survey of administrators at several hundred campuses in each region.
Concordia offers discount tuition program
Concordia University in Irvine has opened its Smart Alliance Program, an arrangement offering employees and members of partner organizations a tuition discount toward their undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Partners eligible for Smart Alliance include the U.S. Postal Service, Orange County Transportation Authority, Association of California Nurse Leaders, the Boy Scouts of America Orange County Council and First Tee of Orange County.
The program also provides a waived application fee and a complimentary evaluation of prior learning for degree articulation.
Undergraduate degrees available include business administration, liberal arts, organization psychology and healthcare management. Master’s degrees include business administration, arts in education, science in nursing and coaching and athletic administration.
For more information, visit www.cui.edu/smart-alliance.