Helping fellow Marines through tough times or to achieve their goals came naturally for Corinna “Nina” Guerra, a former staff sergeant. However, since she hadn’t been through the tough times she was advising her comrades on, she struggled with credibility.
When she transitioned out of the military after 10 years of service — where she was trusted based on her rank — she decided to earn credentials to continue helping her peers.
Guerra was chosen as a Pat Tillman Foundation Scholar for the class of 2024, and is currently a graduate clinician and a doctoral student in clinical psychology at The Chicago School – Dallas. She is on track to graduate with her PsyD in 2027.
Tillman Foundation Scholars
The program is named after Arizona Cardinals football player Pat Tillman who enlisted in the Army in 2002 and was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Tillman was killed in Afghanistan just two years later, while supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. His family and friends honored his legacy by creating the foundation, according to its website, which “supports service members, veterans, and military spouses with educational and leadership development tools.”
Annually, the organization accepts applications for its next class of scholars from December through February; this year’s application deadline is Feb. 1. To get alerted for the 2027 application period, sign up here.
Scholars chosen join a global community of approximately 1,000 peers and supporters out to make a meaningful impact as they transition into their next chapter of service.
“Being a Tillman Scholar has definitely changed my life,” Guerra told Military Families Magazine. “It gave me the support, guidance and the community that empowers me to make this impact.”
Making an impact
As a Marine Corps spouse and a Tillman Scholar herself, CEO of the Pat Tillman Foundation Katherine Steele said that being selected made her feel seen.
“It was this acknowledgment that what I was trying to do to make an impact in the world was going to be meaningful, and somebody else wanted to lean into that,” she said. “For active duty and veterans that apply, it’s this recognition and realization that, while they’ve had lengthy service, that what their next pathway is to make an impact in [their] community is needed and necessary, and somebody wants to invest in that.”
Guerra’s impact, she decided, would be reaching veterans through equine therapy. She is the founder and executive director of Rustic Ranch, a culturally competent clinical program in San Antonio for veterans and first responders centered on ranch-life therapy promoting resilience and connection. Equine therapy was the same avenue where she found respite as she worked to unpack the residual mental health issues — hypervigilance, trauma, anxiety, depression and moral injury — she faced after leaving the military.
“The military does teach you that there’s a time and a place, but they never teach you the time and the place,” she said. “I found that working with the horses, you don’t need to have the words; you work off of body language, a different type of communication energy. We’re kind of mind-body connection, mindfulness, being present and aware. And that was something that flowed much easier for me.”
Guerra said although her specific end goal is unique among the network of Tillman Scholars, she enjoys connecting with her peers regularly and helping future applicants shape their “why.”
Camaraderie and community
As a Pat Tillman Foundation Class of 2023 Scholar, Alex Hilser found camaraderie with a few different scholars as they discussed different EMS care archetypes in different cities.
Hilser shared his dream of studying medicine with his Air Force chief, Anthony Cervantes. A senior pararescueman and Pat Tillman Foundation Class of 2013 Scholar, Cervantes advised him to apply for the scholarship.
“‘These are the guys that are going to be getting stuff done and leading … that are going to be making impacts in the world, and I can see that that’s your kind of trajectory, so you need to be part of this,’” Hilser said Cervantes told him.
His focus while attending the University of Arizona is in wilderness medicine, stemming from his time serving as a pararescueman and his volunteer work with the Southern Arizona Rescue Association.
“It’s really cool that all of the different pieces of the things that I’ve been working on, between the military, search-and-rescue, and medical school, they all are these three prongs that are leading me in this one singular direction,” he said.
His impact, though, would be as a medical director: helping train, equip and use evidence-based medicine to change protocols.
“Instead of those eight, 15, 20 patients I’ll see in a day, now, I’m touching the lives of 100, 200, 300 patients,” Hilser said. “You can make this force-multiplier impact even bigger, just through training people and investing in people so that they can take better care of their patients.”
Hilser advised future applicants to avoid focusing on where they came from and what they’ve done, and instead exhibit how they intend to carry it forward to positively impact the most people.
A fellow search and rescue veteran with 11 years of service to the Coast Guard, Jamie Frost also chose to make her impact studying medicine. She is currently in her second year of medical school at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and is learning innovative ways to integrate mathematics, data science and machine learning with practicing medicine.
She was working full‑time active duty and attending classes part‑time as a student, taking evening pre‑med classes to complete her medical school prerequisites, she said. She was accepted to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai through a special matriculation program for active-duty personnel which eliminates the MCAT requirement.
Frost began medical school almost immediately after separating from active duty, and was already a first‑year medical student at Mount Sinai when she applied to become a Pat Tillman Foundation Class of 2023 Scholar.
“After you look at Pat’s story, it’s hard not to want to be part of a foundation like that,” Frost told Military Families Magazine. “What drew me to it was the community, what it stood for.”
She also works with Service to School, providing education support to veterans. She advised anyone considering higher education not to do it alone, and for prospective applicants of the Tillman Scholarship to not be intimidated.
“You don’t have to change everyone’s lives,” she said. “They talk about the scale and depth of your impact, and I think people who do really well are people who understand themselves the most, who are really dedicated to their communities, and have clear and measurable goals for how they want to achieve that.”
Visit the Pat Tillman Foundation website to learn more about the organization’s work, including the annual Pat’s Run.
