Darden College Advisory Council member Brenda Scanelli didn’t set out to change the world — at least, not at first. Growing up as an only child in a time when girls were often steered toward practicality over ambition, she was discouraged from studying psychology or the social sciences. Teaching was offered as a “safe” option — a fallback.
As a child, Scanelli learned to sew her own clothes to avoid hand-me-downs. She learned to cook, to make do, to become skilled in the things expected of her. In doing so, she discovered something unexpected: a love for teaching. Home economics, where life skills met human development, became her first classroom. She relished the challenge of keeping students engaged, entertained and growing. Scanelli taught for six years — first in Yorktown while her husband John attended law school, and later in Virginia Beach. There, she witnessed the disparities in public education and the emotional and academic challenges students carried with them. She began to wonder: How do we reach children earlier?
That question led her to ϲ in 1975, where she pursued a master’s degree in early childhood education. She hoped to become a better teacher — and a better mother. What she found was something deeper.
At the University Scanelli discovered an academic community that nurtured both rigor and care. She built close relationships with faculty who treated her not just as a student, but as a peer. She worked as a graduate assistant, shared a cramped office with a fellow educator and found joy in the intensity of her program.
“ϲ gave me the tools to see unmet needs and the confidence to act on them,” she said. “The knowledge I gained on child development, the research process and effective communication continues to inform everything I do.”
Ultimately, that foundation would become the catalyst for something far bigger.
While on a vacation to an island in the Caribbean with their daughter in 2002, Scanelli and her husband, John, learned of a local children’s home that had lost its library in a fire and of the local classrooms lack of supplies and basic educational tools. They saw under-resourced classes with no books, broken furniture and bare floors. The teachers they met were working with what little they had to educate the children.
“When you see a need that is so pressing, you can't turn your back on it,” Brenda Scanelli said.
What started as a simple gesture — sending a few boxes of books — quickly evolved into a large-scale collaborative mission. They gradually developed partnerships with the Ministries of Education and other local organizations as well as the people on six islands in the Caribbean. Leveraging connections with ϲ faculty, friends in Virginia Beach schools and Navy volunteers, the Scanellis began acquiring gently used school furniture, supplies and educational tools that would otherwise be discarded. Over the course of more than a decade, they shipped more than 25 containers of materials to underserved schools across six Caribbean islands.
But for Scanelli, the work didn’t end with the shipments.
Alongside ϲ’s distance learning team and supportive faculty like former Darden College of Education & Professional Studies Deans Linda Irwin-DeVitis, Ed.D., and Jane S. Bray, Ed.D., Scanelli helped develop a website filled with videos and tutorials on using classroom manipulatives—hands-on tools like blocks, counters and models that help students understand abstract concepts. She led live, interactive training sessions with educators across multiple islands — long before video conferencing became mainstream. The goal wasn’t just to donate supplies. It was to empower educators to teach in new ways and to bring hands-on, inquiry-driven learning into classrooms. The partnership empowered hundreds of educators, and through them, thousands of students.
The Scanellis listened — not just to school principals, but to the children, the teachers and the social workers. They asked what was needed and responded with love: culturally appropriate books, math manipulatives, furniture and support. In doing so, they formed lifelong friendships. Even when John Scanelli needed a heart transplant and the project paused, the bonds they’d created never faded.
“They supported us through the hardest time of our lives,” Brenda Scanelli said. “That’s what love does.”
She shared that though the project has slowed in recent years, she still talks to her friends on the islands every week.
Today, Scanelli continues to shape the future of education at the University as a member of the Darden College Advisory Council, lending her voice, experience and enduring commitment to the next generation of educators and professionals. The couple also continue their commitment to service through philanthropy. Each year, they donate to Darden College — supporting initiatives that align with their deepest values. From classroom innovation tools like the Mursion Project to the Critical Conversations in Education series, which fosters honest dialogue on equity, justice and systemic change. To them, it’s not charity. It’s love in action.
“ϲ gave me more than I could ever give back,” Brenda often says. Together, she and John have invested in programs that strengthen the community they care so deeply about.
