Leanne Fernald represents the family of Billi Odegaard in this scholarship program. As Billi’s sister, Leanne is fully supportive of Billi’s life-long efforts to encourage health care students to continue their education.

Leanne Fernald has a B.A. and master’s degree in elementary education, with 30 years of experience, many of those years in inner city schools with multi-cultural challenges. While working for the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas and surrounding areas, the 6th largest school district in the nation, she received training from national experts in mathematics and science. She taught as an adjunct professor at  and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and led many hours of staff development in cutting edge research on how students learn. She organized district-wide professional training sessions for over 1,000 teachers. Ms. Fernald was instrumental in the development of the extensive reports required for the No Child Left Behind Act.

Ms. Fernald established an ongoing partnership between the large Clark County School District and the many field trip destinations used by school district teachers to expand their students’ experiences. Examples include: Lake Mead National Park, nature preserves, zoos, marine environments, history museums, the Las Vegas Valley Water District and others. The goal was to have those public institution educators learn best educational practices from school district educators and public education educators to learn content from those very knowledgeable rangers, docents and field educators. She also designed student programs for the Las Vegas Valley Water District and the Las Vegas Water Park.