Family Affair
Philanthropy Is A Personal Matter For Delray Beach Native Jennifer Magi
Move over, millennials. Generation Z is hot on your heels – and full of promise.
Jennifer Magi, a Florida State University engineering student, is a case in point. Practical, down-to-earth and focused, the 21-year-old was named FSU’s 2019 Undergraduate Humanitarian of the Year in April thanks in large part to her work with the Gift of Life (GOL) Marrow Registry, based in Boca Raton. The award was presented by John Thrasher, FSU president.
Magi, a Delray Beach native, started working with the national nonprofit in 2018 – just after her father, Michael, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of blood cancer.
“No one in our family was a match for a bone marrow transplant,” she remembers. “So, you are really relying on strangers for help.”
To find a donor, Magi began recruiting FSU students to sign up for DNA cheek swabs. She then became an official GOL campus ambassador and founded a national chapter on campus. Within three months, a match was found for her dad, and he is now on the mend.
Magi is modest about her role with GOL.
“My parents always encouraged me to do things for others,” she says.
Her father and mother, Susan, still live in Delray; both are in computer-related fields. Magi’s brother is a reliability engineer, and her uncle is a marine biologist.
Those STEM models inspired her to pursue an engineering career. And she selected the FAMU-FSU School of Engineering because it allows undergraduates to conduct their own research via the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Now entering her junior year, Magi furthered her education with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fellowship in Hawaii this summer to study monk seals, a protected species found only in the archipelago.
Currently, Magi faces another important choice: whether to enroll in graduate school, study abroad or get a job in the industry after graduation. Right now, she’s leaning toward the second option.
“I want to get away from pure science and into the application of science and implementation,” she says. “I want to design solutions for different problems.” O