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# Ben Finzel, president of RENEWPR, establishes RENEWPR LGBTQIA Endowed Scholarship at Texas Tech Alumni Association
- URL: https://capitolcommunicator.com/ben-finzel-president-of-renewpr-establishes-renewpr-lgbtqia-endowed-scholarship-at-texas-tech-alumni-association/
- Published: 2023-07-01T00:52:55.000Z
- Updated: 2023-07-01T01:35:01.000Z
- Author: Capitol Communicator
- Tags: People, #wp-top-right-sponsored, #Import 2026-10-08 18:53

**Ben Finzel, President of** [**RENEWPR**](https://www.renewpr.com/?ref=capitolcommunicator.com)**, a boutique communications firm in Washington, D.C.,** has established the [RENEW**PR** LGBTQIA Endowed Scholarship](https://www.texastechalumni.org/s/1422/images/gid1001/editor%5Fdocuments/scholarships/2022-ttaa-scholarship-guide-web.pdf?gid=1001&pgid=1417&ref=capitolcommunicator.com) at the [Texas Tech Alumni Association](http://www.texastechalumni.org/?ref=capitolcommunicator.com) for LGBTQIA students at [Texas Tech University](http://www.ttu.edu/?ref=capitolcommunicator.com) (his alma mater). According to Finzel, it will provide an annual scholarship for an LGBTQIA student in the college of Arts and Sciences or any LGBTQIA student in a college at Texas Tech who plans to study abroad. The first scholarship was awarded last summer and the second will be announced soon.

According to Finzel: “Launching this scholarship is about more than giving back – although that is part of the motivation – it’s also about recognizing the life experience and insight that I gained as a student at Texas Tech University more than 30 years ago. And it’s about helping the next generation of LGBTQIA students to have the opportunities I did to study both at home and abroad. College is hard enough: imagine being an LGBTQIA kid with limited financial means. And then imagine being an LGBTQIA kid who feels like a fish out of water because they are in an unknown environment that is nothing like the one they came from. Yep, that was me.

“Don’t get me wrong. I loved my experience as a student at Texas Tech University. And I’m very proud of the Bachelor of Arts degree I earned in 1989\. But it wasn’t always easy. And I was only able to attend Texas Tech and study abroad (which I did for a semester in Salzburg, Austria) because of the generosity of my grandparents who helped fund my education and because Texas Tech offered a study abroad scholarship (which I was the first person to be awarded it to).”

Finzel states the scholarship started small – $500 a year – but “I hope to expand it to $1,000 in the years ahead and I’ll be looking for other ways to help ensure that the next generation of LGBTQIA students has additional resources to foster a well-rounded education that will open up opportunities to them to go out and change the world.”