Senior Profile: Gabrielle Apollon, CC

Many roads led Gabrielle Apollon to her graduation from Columbia, but she believes one spiritual path has guided her along the way.

Her mother, Mary Apollon explained. “After my separation with my ex-husband, we became homeless and we had to rely on the Lord for everything.” She said that the family—herself, Gabrielle, and Gabrielle’s younger brother, Christian—became very grounded in their faith because, she said, “we had to pray for everything.”

Faith followed her to Columbia. The graduating Columbia College senior devoted a large amount of time to the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on campus. She said she enjoyed the group because it provided a community for “meeting engaging people, getting to grow in your faith with them, watching them grow.”

“Because of the Ivy community,” Apollon said, referring to the somewhat cynical viewpoint many students share when it comes to religion, “growing in faith has been challenging but ... in the best way.”

Influenced by her faith and inspired by peers who she described as “people who are world changers, affecting things,” Apollon made her own impact on campus.

In her sophomore year, she and a friend—Nora Weber, CC ’10—were awarded a $10,000 grant to sponsor the year-round schooling of 35 children in Haiti.

The summer after her sophomore year, Apollon travelled to Haiti—her mother’s homeland—to teach English, Creole, health education, Bible study, and arts and crafts to 260 children. Apollon describes her work in Haiti as her biggest accomplishment, where she made education available to children in a country where only 50 percent of kids go to school. She has also tutored students in New York.

Dominique Jean-Louis, CC ’09 and a fellow Haitian who bonded with Apollon during Days on Campus and has remained a close friend, said, “Gabby is one of the people who have changed the way I think about being a positive force in the world, and being a good friend. Her faith is something I don’t necessarily share, but it is something that inspires me to remain centered in my own life.”

Anna Hunt, who graduated from Columbia last year, has known Apollon for four years. The two met through InterVarsity during Apollon’s first year, when Hunt was a sophomore. “I feel blessed to have Gabby as a friend. Her genuine concern and care are rare to find,” Hunt said.

Apollon said she “couldn’t do any of this” without friends and family. She’s grateful to her mother, who she said “sacrificed a lot for me to be here as a single parent.”

After graduation, Apollon—a political science major—will spend one more year at Columbia to earn her master’s degree at the School of International and Public Affairs through the five-year program with the college. She hopes to use her education to continue to work for positive change in Haiti.

Whatever she does, though, her friends know she will be able to do it well.

“One of Gabby’s most significant contributions to college life is definitely her leadership,” Hunt said. “She builds community wherever she goes.”