For the sixth straight year, Mount St. Mary Academy was represented in the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame “Girls of Distinction” program. Isabella Nguyen ’25 and Carson Vogelpohl ’26 were two of five young women chosen from area high schools to attend the 2024 Hall of Fame induction ceremony held on Thursday, August 22, at the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock.
As two of this year’s Girls of Distinction, Isabella and Carson were provided with the unique opportunity to meet the 2024 inductees and help escort them to the stage during the ceremony. According to the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame, the five high school students chosen for this honor each year serve in leadership positions, maintain high academic standards, and strive to make their communities a better place.
Isabella is very active in Mount’s performing arts programs and activities. She is a member of the International Thespian Society and serves as president of Mount’s Thespian Troupe. She is also a member of the National Speech and Debate Association and the award-winning Concert Belles and is a leader of the Campus Ministry Music Team. Furthermore, Isabella has served on Student Council for four years and is active in Beta Club. She has received numerous honors for theatre and music, most recently winning the National High School Musical Theatre Songwriting Challenge for her original song “Live Before Life’s Gone” from the musical she is writing alongside her friend and classmate, Maya Johnson ’25.
“Getting the honor of being a Girl of Distinction was such an amazing and eye-opening experience,” Isabella said of her recent honor. “Not only were this year’s Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame inductees outstanding women with incredibly inspiring stories, but the young women I was recognized alongside were all remarkable as well. I feel so blessed to have found such amazing new friends in my fellow honorees and to have had the chance to meet such inspiring women who have shaped, not just our state, but the world we live in. I hope that I can take some of their wisdom, resilience, and perseverance with me as I move forward and continue their legacy of making the world a better place – one woman at a time.”
Carson, who currently ranks first in her class, is also very involved at Mount. She is a member of Belle Ambassadors, Honor Council, National Honor Society, The Mount school newspaper, Mu Alpha Theta, and Latin Club. She is also a member of the Belles basketball and soccer teams, for which she received All-Conference honors and the MSM Passionate Athlete Award. She is a very active volunteer in her community, serving at the Arkansas Foodbank, Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, Women and Children’s First, and the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. She co-chaired last year’s 25th Anniversary Power of the Purse event, which raised more than $300,000 for the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas.
For Carson, hearing the inductees’ speeches during the event only encouraged her passion for service. “One of the honorees at the event said, ‘If service is beneath you, then leadership is beyond you.’ This affirmed that the foundation of service learning at Mount is truly setting me up for future success,” she said.
The Girls of Distinction program was implemented in 2017, and Mount St. Mary Academy is the only school to have had at least one student chosen each year young women have been selected: Stephanie Verdaris ’18 (2017), America Alejandri ’20 and Annie Quo ’19 (2018), Brynne Johnson ’21 (2019), Millie Allgood ’22 (2022), and Eliza Jane Null ’24 (2023). The program took a two-year hiatus in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid.
The goal of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame is to honor, in perpetuity, women whose contributions have influenced the direction of Arkansas in their community or the state. It is dedicated to preserving the history of its inductees’ accomplishments and to providing encouragement and inspiration to women across the state by sharing their powerful stories. The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, founders of Mount St. Mary Academy, were honored as members of the second class of inductees in 2016. Former Mount St. Mary president and CEO Karen Flake ’65 was inducted in 2018, children and families advocate Amy Rossi ’71 was inducted in 2022, and banking and community leader Cathy Hastings Owen ’76 was inducted last year.
