Talisha Payton Memorial Scholarship

The goal of this scholarship is to offer financial aid to help students facing barriers on their path to higher education and who demonstrate significant financial need. According to her family, Talisha often committed to helping others. When she said she’d help someone, it was for the long term. For that reason, this scholarship is a financial commitment for the regular duration of the MS in User Experience and Interaction Design program.

With endless empathy, curiosity, intelligence, creativity, and dedication, Talisha sought problems to solve well before she found the practice of user experience design. In our program and among her many colleagues, she flourished as a user experience researcher and designer. Talisha embodied the ethos of our program—to locate, interrogate, and remove barriers of the human experience. Put simply, Talisha was very good at helping others. 

Talisha earned a Bachelor of Arts from Central High School in Philadelphia, a Bachelor of Science from Rochester Institute of Technology, and pursued a Master of Science degree at Jefferson. Beginning in 2012, she worked at RSA Security, Vanguard, Delphic Digital, Lilly Pulitzer, EY-Intuitive, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, Cerner Corporation and, most recently, Cognizant in a career that demonstrated hustle and grit.

Talisha is survived by her impressive contribution to the practice of user experience design in Philadelphia. Your gift to this fund ensures that her memory and capacity to help others lives on.