Ask high school senior Monica Feeney to describe herself and she reaches for verbs, not titles: she shows up, she listens, she organizes, she articulates, she pulls people in. 

At six years old, she talked her mom into signing her up for a swim team. By seventh grade, she was sitting in national meetings with doctors and researchers, taking notes on cancer treatments most adults couldn’t explain. Now, as a senior at the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur in Villanova, she is a captain of her swim team, a fundraiser who has helped raise over $3,000 for cancer research, and a student ambassador who shares with prospective families what a school tour can’t quite capture. 

The thread running through Monica’s story isn’t a single sport or cause. It’s a habit of noticing what other people need and figuring out how to build it for them.

Monica Feeney is a 2026 Main Line Parent Young Women of Influence Award Winner

Main Line Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Monica was nominated by a senior leadership committee at her high school and selected as Main Line Parent’s singular 2026 Young Woman of Influence Award Winner based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.

Beyond the awards, our Women of Influence Luncheon and Speed Networking Night attendees come together as our Women of Influence Network, a community fostering connections, collaboration, and mutual support.

A Cause Rooted in Family

Before Monica Feeney was born, her father was diagnosed with cancer. She never witnessed the diagnosis firsthand, but she grew up in its aftermath, aware of what her family could have lost and grateful for the doctors and nurses who helped her father recover. “He was a very, very good athlete,” she says of her dad, who played collegiate football and was doing everything right when his diagnosis came. “It’s really eye opening to see how you can be such a healthy person and something so tragic can happen to you, and it’s pretty much out of your control.”

In seventh grade, that family history led Monica to Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Student Board for Pediatric Cancer Research, a national group she has now served on for four years. The board connected her with peers who had either survived cancer themselves or watched a family member go through it. Monica was also exposed to MSK doctors who explained their research and their fundraising needs directly to the students. “Automatically I was already learning all about different types of cancer,” she says. “That was already the start of my research process.”

In 2024, Monica focused her fundraising on Cycle for Survival, an indoor cycling program where each bike represents a team raising money for cancer research. She was drawn to it partly because she is an athlete herself, and partly because of the people she met there. “They all taught me how to immerse myself and turn compassion into action,” she said. By her second year, she had been named the student board’s lead for Cycle for Survival.

Building a Fundraiser from Scratch on the Main Line

Monica’s fundraising instincts led her well beyond her board service. This year, she partnered with Posh Boutique in Malvern, a shop owned by Tina Corrado, whom Monica met through a family connection. Monica recalls asking Corrado if she could “do some sort of fundraiser at (her) boutique.” Corrado, a Notre Dame alumna, said yes immediately. Together they built a shopping event where 20 percent of proceeds went to cancer research when customers mentioned MSK at checkout. Monica filmed promotional videos, got her school to publicize the event, and watched it become a hit, raising over $1,500 in a single day. Always looking to personalize her efforts, Monica notes that after the event she “got the names of everyone that donated and wrote letters to them.”

Across her years on the board, Monica has helped raise more than $3,000 for MSK. She is already thinking about how to grow the Posh Boutique partnership next year, possibly bringing in another shop on the same street or pulling in more of her school.

Leadership in the Water and on Campus

Swimming has been part of Monica’s life since she was six years old, and she will spend her senior year as a team captain at Notre Dame. She describes the sport as a constant that has shaped who she is. “Swimming has taught me that leadership is not just about winning races,” she said. “It is about showing up consistently, pushing through discomfort, and helping teammates believe in themselves.”

As captain, Monica has focused on making the team welcoming for younger swimmers joining a demanding program. She organized a season kickoff pool party for the team to relax and bond. She also designed a new team sweatshirt to help fund a packed meet schedule. “I just wanted to make sure it was a really welcoming atmosphere for the new kids that were coming onto the team,” she says.

Off the pool deck, Monica has served as a student ambassador at Notre Dame since her sophomore year, giving tours and providing a welcoming voice to prospective families. She also volunteers with the school’s Meals for Many Club and helps with publicity for the Campus Ministry Club. Head of School Dr. Laura Hotchkiss selected Monica to accompany her to the Main Line Power Women event. There, Feeney practiced marketing and networking alongside women she describes as deeply inspiring. Notre Dame, which competes as part of the Girls Interac League and maintains its own swimming and diving program, has given her a platform for nearly every part of her leadership.

Last summer, Monica volunteered for a week as a camp counselor with the TGR Foundation (formerly the Tiger Woods Foundation), working with underprivileged children from the Philadelphia area on schoolwork and healthy habits. “What they do for kids is absolutely incredible,” she says, “and I can only hope to do something like that for kids one day as well.”

Opening Doors for Other Girls

Monica’s mentorship shows up in smaller, quieter ways too. On the MSK student board, she built close relationships with other young fundraisers, including a fellow board member who spoke publicly about her own cancer diagnosis. She worked alongside fellow student board members to design fundraising incentives for teams across the country. 

Monica credits much of what she knows about advocacy to Rachel Flannery, a marketing and fundraising leader at MSK who mentored her early on. “She helped me so much,” Monica says. “She would reach out to people for me, to help me start fundraisers and help me advertise.”

Now Monica is doing the same for others. As captain, she has made a point of pairing older swimmers with the team’s newest and youngest members. As a student ambassador, she walks prospective students through what she calls the “sisterhood” of an all-girls school, a culture she didn’t expect when she transferred from a co-ed school her freshman year. “I met some of my very, very best friends,” she notes. “I think the community that Notre Dame fosters is really, really inclusive and really, really empowering.”

She also thinks about influence closer to home. “I have a younger brother, and I can only hope that I’m a great influence to him,” she shares. “I hope that I can influence my friends to be motivated.”

What Influence Means to Her

When asked directly what the word “influence” means to her, Monica doesn’t talk about titles or numbers raised.”It means seriously and deeply touching someone that wants help, needs help, any of the above,” she says. “I think that influence goes beyond the marketing and all that, the physical things. It’s more about the emotional, deeper connection.”

The idea of influence as something felt rather than measured runs through everything Monica has built so far: a fundraiser that grew out of her family’s personal experiences, a swim team she’s trying to make feel like home for its youngest members, and a habit of showing up for people and fostering connection. 

As Monica puts it, describing the only goal she really has left for her senior year, “I want to be able to have the type of influence on someone else where they can just have a better day.”

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