Marianne Ragins

      In Marianne Ragins senior year of high school, she won over $400,000 in scholarships for college. As perhaps the first student ever to amass nearly half a million dollars in scholarship money, she has been featured in many publications including USA Today, People, Newsweek, Money, Essence and on the cover of Parade. She has also made hundreds of radio and television appearances on shows such as "Good Morning America," "The Home Show," and the "Mike & Maty Show."

      Ragins is the author of the highly successful Winning Scholarships for College: An Insider's Guide, College Survival & Success Skills 101, and other publications. She is the president of The Scholarship Workshop and sponsor of the Leading the Future II and Ragins Braswell National Scholarships. Ragins is an experienced motivational speaker and lecturer who has traveled nationally and internationally conducting The Scholarship Workshop presentation and giving other motivational seminars and speeches.

      Marianne graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science from Florida A&M University and received an MBA from George Washington University. Both her degrees were entirely funded by scholarships and other free aid. Marianne is originally from Macon, Georgia and currently resides in Bristow, Virginia, a small city outside of Washington, DC.

    Why Should You Engage Marianne Ragins as a Speaker for Your Next Event?

• To inspire your audience with an engaging speaker who has mesmerized audiences for years with personal examples. The most frequently used words when describing her presentations. "Awesome!" "Excellent!"
• To motivate your students, parents, and educators to exceed all expectations, including their own.
• To keep your audiences engaged with humor, interesting anecdotes, and amazing facts
• To inform your audience with relevant examples and stories of success that relate to students and parents in numerous situations. Marianne can not only provide information relevant to mixed audiences of youth, parents, counselors and other educators, she provides powerful information for at-risk youth, minorities, middle-class students, non-traditional students, and 1st generation.
• Students attending certain keynotes given by Marianne Ragins may become eligible for the Ragins/Braswell National Scholarship, a scholarship offered by Marianne exclusively to audience attendees.

Marianne Ragins's Most Requested Programs:

HOW 2 WEEKS CHANGED MY LIFE INTO AN INSPIRATION FOR MILLIONS

Using anecdotal stories and humor, Marianne takes audiences on her journey from small town dreamer in a family with no collegiate background, who'd never traveled to more than two states in her life; to how she became a scholarship guru, international traveler, college graduate, and an achiever for all of her girlhood dreams using three guiding principles to shape her decisions.

THE SCHOLARSHIP PROCESS – HOW TO FIND AND WIN SCHOLARSHIPS

In this motivational and informative presentation, speaker Marianne Ragins proves that it is not always the student with the best grades or the highest SAT scores who wins scholarships. Instead she shows students of all ages that most scholarships are awarded to students who exhibit the best preparation. By attending this presentation, a student or parent will be well prepared to meet the challenge of finding and winning scholarships.

COLLEGE ORIENTATION - COLLEGE SURVIVAL & SUCCESS SKILLS 101

Do you want to help students put a little more zing into their college experience? Would you like to help them uncover strategies for winning college money even after they've enrolled? Curious about common pitfalls most students encounter and how to avoid them? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this session is for your audience! Attendees of this presentation will learn how to find more scholarships and awards to shrink the tuition bill, invest on shoestring budget, understand and avoid the credit crunch, tame their credit card and student loan balances, and secure high‐powered internships, co‐ops, and summer jobs. Engage Marianne for this exciting session and your students can learn how to pack their college years with experiences that can lead to graduate and professional schools clamoring to admit them, employers offering multiple job opportunities, and a whole lot of fun and satisfaction! Conducted by a $400,000 scholarship winner and 1st generation college graduate, this session will include several handouts and interactive discussion.

SCHOLARSHIP AND COLLEGE FUNDING STRATEGIES FOR CURRENT COLLEGE STUDENTS

Student loan balances have been increasingly exponentially for years. This session will provide attendees with strategies for finding ways to fund their college education without substantially increasing their loan balances. Best practices will also be discussed for selecting majors, learning the future earnings outlook for a career path, and handling the resulting loan balances associated with a particular major without additional funding.