The good Cornellians can do: Amber Briscoe ’25

Amber Briscoe '25 still remembers her first formal art lesson when she was in fourth grade. Her aunt enrolled her in an acrylic painting class. “I fell in love with it,” Amber says.

During middle and high school, Amber volunteered to do art with pediatric patients at hospitals near her home in Germantown, Maryland. She realized that coloring or sculpting with Playdough helped the kids forget that they were in a scary hospital—at least for a short while. She says this experience stuck with her.

After graduating from Cornell with a degree in Human Biology, Health, and Society, Amber founded a non-profit called Arts-n-STEM 4 Hearts to share her passion for art. The organization delivers arts and crafts kits to hospitalized children, the elderly, and veterans and their families.

Amber and other volunteers also lead in-person art sessions with people of all ages. The focus, she says, is on bringing art to “those who need it most.” This includes students with significant disabilities. Amber and her team employ adaptive painting techniques to allow every student to take part.

“We do things like spreading shaving cream, rolling ping-pong balls around in Tupperware, and squishing paint through Ziploc bags to marble the colors,” Amber explains.

“Many of the students are nonverbal, so their small gestures, excited eyes, and smiles and laughter feel really big. The quiet moments of connection are a big part of why I do this work,” she says.

Amber has also been applying to dental schools. She recently interned with a prosthodontics and maxillofacial prosthetics team, where she watched experts rebuild features for their patients—with results that she describes as “genuinely life-changing.”

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