Tampa, Fla. – Former Lake-Sumter State College volleyball standout and President's Award winner, Renata Gomes Martins, is getting some big-time attention with a recent call to action for celebrities and leaders.
Renata made an immediate impact during her two years at LSSC. Not only was she the 2018 President's Award winner, the Brazil native was also selected as the Region 8 Roberta Stokes Scholar-Athlete award recipient, becoming the first LSSC athlete to earn the achievement. Academically, Renata had a career GPA of 4.0 and was a two-time NJCAA All-Academic performer. All of that on top of a two-year volleyball career in which she played in 46 matches with 855 career assists and was named LSSC 2017-18 Female Athlete of the Year.
Two years after graduating from Lake-Sumter, Renata continues her path to success earning her Bachelor's Degree in Global Business from the University of South Florida. Recently, she has found herself in the headlines after reaching out to celebrities and local leaders via social media and issuing a challenege, asking them to mentor a 2020 graduate.
The video, which can be found on Instagram, has over 2500 views and over 250 comments since the original post on May 27. The idea for the video came after watching celebrities doing commencement speeches online. Renata specifically names Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Tom Brady and Lebron James amongst others for a sort of call-to-arms to assist 2020 graduates during this unprecedented time in our history. She cites that celebrities and leaders alike have had mentors along the way in their lives and now she is issuing a challenge for them to do the same. At the end of the original video, Renata says, "The class of 2020 is up for our own challenge, but we will be much stronger with you by our side. Who's down?"
Bay News 9 picked up the story on Thursday (6/4) and is circulating it on their channel as well as their website. Renata was able to take a few minutes from her new-found fame to talk to us about her project. We asked her if she ever imagined her video gaining so much attention, so fast. "Up to this point on Instagram, my top posts had received maybe 500 views," Renata said. "I truly believed in my heart that this idea had the potential to help a lot of people and was ecstatic to see it hit 2,000 views in just a few days."
Renata told us she has not heard back from any celebrities just yet, but likes to think the message is just starting to reach their teams. "Perhaps these celebrities and leaders have decided to take on the challenge and mentor someone privately, without all the media attention." She added, "That would be a dream come true!"
We wanted to know what her ultimate goal was with this challenge. Renata told us, "We will be stronger if we become mentors to each other and go out of our way to help those who need it most." She went on to say, "While it would be incredible to hear back from these leaders and celebrities, I have already heard from many community leaders, 2020 graduates, and current students and was flattered to receive such kind, encouraging messages. Many people shared the post offering to become mentors. For that reason, in a way, I believe the goal of the 2020 Mentor Challenge has already been reached!"
Links to both her original social media post and the recent story from Bay News 9 can be found at the top of the release.