Accounting to Nursing: How Friendship is Inspiring Scholarship at VCU

By Zaynah Qutubuddin

The impact of friendship can be deeply rooted and last beyond a lifetime.

For Katie Walker, a 2025 graduate of the VCU School of Nursing, the life and loss of her childhood friend Lyna Nguyen inspired her to completely change the trajectory of her profession from accounting to healthcare.

“I was the quiet one, and Lyna was the spunky and outgoing one,” said Walker, who received the Dr. Barbara H. Dunn Nursing Scholarship when she was at VCU. “She was sick for such a long time, but she had this electric energy. She just wanted to live life to the fullest.”

Nguyen was diagnosed with leukemia in high school, and her disease relapsed when she was 20. With treatment options exhausted, Nguyen shifted her focus to fulfilling her bucket list of meaningful experiences. Just a month before Nguyen passed, she went skydiving with her family.

“She was the type to say, ‘I’m going to do this,’ and actually do it,” Walker said. 

It was this ambitious spirit that Walker channeled when she decided to leave a decade-long career in corporate accounting and chase her goal: to be an oncology nurse.

“I took that leap of faith the way she always did,” Walker said.

Already a wife and mother of two young boys, adding student to the list of roles meant Walker had to be meticulous with expenses, so when she received the Dunn Scholarship – not once, but twice – she felt liberated from financial strain. 

The scholarship supports students who are pursuing nursing as their second career.

“I was very excited, because it provided security that helped me along,” Walker said. “And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I received this specific scholarship that was inspired by friendship.”

Walker returned to school because of the impact that Nguyen’s friendship had on her life and her journey, similar to the impact friendship had on Barbara Brown, Ph.D., who created the Dunn Nursing Scholarship. 

Honoring Friendship

For more than 50 years, Barbara Dunn, Ph.D., warmly known as Barbie, has succeeded in turning one group of 1970 School of Nursing classmates into lifelong friends.

“It wasn’t easy,” said Dr. Brown. “A lot of this was during the time you couldn't just send an email. It meant calling, following up. A lot of coordination that is time consuming, and Barbie did that for us.”

Dr. Brown wanted to honor her friend’s dedication and commitment to bringing people together, so she created an endowed scholarship in Dr. Dunn’s honor to support the school where their special bond began.

Dr. Dunn served on the MCV Foundation board of trustees for six years and is a lifetime honorary trustee. She played an integral role in transitioning the MCV Alumni Association and the VCU Alumni Association to a unified VCU Alumni Council and preserving the legacy of the MCVAA endowed scholarships at the MCV Foundation.

“From my perspective, Dr. Dunn is the nurse everyone needs, the volunteer every organization wants and the friend we can all hope to have,” Dr. Brown said. “She was an obvious choice to name a scholarship in her honor, so I did.”

Full Circle

The summer after freshman year of college before Nguyen’s leukemia relapsed, Walker remembers being convinced to drive from their hometown of Kilmarnock to Six Flags America in Maryland. On top of having limited highway driving experience, Walker identified herself as “not the greatest driver back then.”

Despite the nerve-wracking trek up the interstate, Walker said the day turned out to be once-in-a-lifetime core memory for the best friends.

It was Nguyen who brought color to the world with her infectious smile and who would pull Walker out of her shell and instigate adventure. It was Nguyen who left an impression on so many hearts even without trying, Walker said.

After her diagnosis, Nguyen spent much of her time in and out of the hospital at VCU Health, sometimes for months. Due to the aggressive nature of the cancer, she also received a bone marrow transplant on the 10th floor of VCU’s North Hospital.

Now, that’s also the same floor where Walker works.

After graduation, Walker accepted a position with the Cellular Immunotherapies and Transplant Program at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, which is housed in the former location of the bone marrow transplant unit. 

“The scholarship, me working on the same floor where Lyna got her transplant. It’s such a full circle moment,” Walker said. “Sixteen years later, Lyna continues to inspire me. You don’t forget people like that.”

If you are interested in supporting the VCU School of Nursing, please contact Jessica Sorenson, the school’s senior director of development, at jlsorensen@vcu.edu or 804- 615-5877.