Image: Susette M. Talarico Public Service Leadership Award Winners for 2024: Abigail Cushing and Fatime Niane This special award is given each year to the student(s) who has shown exemplary service to the community and on campus during their time in the CJ Program. Dr. Talarico was the longest serving Director of the Criminal Justice Studies Program. Following her retirement, friends and colleagues created the Susette M. Talarico Fund that supports the annual Talarico Lecture as well as this award. This year’s winners are Abigail Cushing and Fatime Niane. Abigail Cushing Abby shared about her experience running UGA’s American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of the Darkness Campus Walk. This is just one of Abby’s many service roles, but her desire to change the culture and conversation around mental health and suicide in order to help save lives is exemplary! Fatime Niane Fatime very movingly shared about her experiences mobilizing voters in the Senegalese/Gambian community in 2020. Since then, Fatime has continued to engage in community mobilization work, as well as serving in leadership roles with organizations such as student government, Georgia Daze Minority Recruitment, and the Residence Hall Association. As Fatime put it in her application, when she sees a need in her community, she gets to work on rectifying it.
