(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Kya Leptrone has struggled with a severe stutter all her life, and she’s used her story to help others and build a community. Her passion, advocacy and leadership has not gone unnoticed.

She began her blog, Simply Stuttering, when she was only 13, as a way to connect with and encourage other stutterers. Today, she is 17 and looking at colleges, where she hopes to train to become a speech and language pathologist. The Daniels Fund has helped to open that door by awarding her the Daniels Scholarship in 2024, an honor given to only 209 high schoolers this year.

Kya is Vice President of Sisters Who Stutter, an Instagram group founded by teen girls who stutter, to provide support and uplift others in their community. Her personal TikTok account, dedicated to stuttering advocacy, has over 230,000 followers.

Courtesy: The Daniels Fund. Photo is of Kya Leptrone.

“I made a blog about what it’s like to be a stutterer,” Leptrone said. “And some of the difficulties that are presented with it. And then the summer after my sophomore year, when I was 16, I took to TikTok where I was making talks about my stutter and I was doing real-world situations that a lot of other people that stutter can resonate with, such as going through a drive-thru and having to order in a drive-thru with a stutter.”

Courtesy: The Daniels Fund. Photo is of a group of recent Daniels Scholars.

The Daniels Fund was founded in 2000 by Bill Daniels, a lifelong businessman and cable TV pioneer. “He was an entrepreneur, and he was a philanthropist throughout his entire life,” said Josh Green, Senior Vice President for the Scholarship Program at the Daniels Fund. “Bill was somebody who was generous throughout all of these endeavors, you know, and that continued when he planned to create this foundation.”

Daniels transferred $1,000,000,000 to the Daniels Fund and decided that upon his passing and prior to that, 30% of the proceeds coming off of that billion-dollar investment would go to scholarships every year. So far, more than 5,000 Daniels Scholarships have been awarded since 2000, and the program has over 3,000 active alumni.

“And so, you know, Bill was looking for more than, you know, strictly an academically talented student,” Green said. “He’s looking for somebody who can do the work, but also has this exceptional character and leadership ability and really shows that potential to be a leader in their community and give back throughout their lives. And Kya exemplifies that in so many ways.”