As a child growing up in South Africa, Aubrey Strul witnessed firsthand the injustice in denying kids a fair opportunity to succeed.
“I was brought up during the apartheid system, and I couldn’t stand it,” Strul says. “As a young kid I reviled it, I spoke out against it, I just thought it was incredibly bad to hold people back…That experience was one of the drivers for me to ensure that we give access to underserved children who are deserving of an education.”
Strul’s experience taught him to never take education for granted, a lesson that would stay with him as he became the first member of his family to graduate college, and in the years that followed as he forged a wildly successful business career in the sectors of manufacturing, real estate and private equity. His passion for education would ultimately culminate in the creation, alongside former Florida Atlantic President John Kelly, of the Kelly/Strul Emerging Scholars program.
Established in 2017, the Kelly/ Strul scholarships offer a path to higher education for low-income, first-generation college students that allows them to graduate debt-free by paying for every aspect of their college experience, from books and housing to tuition. The idea for the program began to form over a dinner between Strul and his wife, Sally, and John Kelly and his wife, Carolyn.
“During the night [Carolyn] explained how many deserving students don’t get access to an education, and how many just don’t [attend] a university,” Strul recalls. “This really concerned me, and I started to get really involved.”
Strul and John Kelly then spent more than a year meticulously crafting the scholarship program, with Strul making frequent visits to the Florida Atlantic campus to consult with the faculty on how best to ensure students’ success. While his educational background is in finance and accounting, his first love was manufacturing—putting things together with precise detail and anticipating every stress test it might have to endure.
“I wouldn’t start until everything was there,” Strul says. “I don’t start things that aren’t well-thought-out.”
As Strul’s thoughtfulness in execution served him well in business, it now serves Kelly/Strul scholars. Since its inception, the Kelly/Strul scholarship program has graduated 56 students debt-free, with 73 currently enrolled and on track to get their degrees as of writing. Among the Kelly/Strul scholars there is a 100% graduation rate, with more than 60% finishing their degree in fewer than four years. And while the numbers tell a success story on paper, it’s the change that Strul sees in the students themselves that really drives home the benefits of the program.
“We have all these students out there who are just happy and successful on campus,” Strul says. “They are the best ambassadors we could ever have for what we do.”
A key feature baked into the program is mentorship, where scholars that have graduated or are further into the program avail themselves for one-on-one support with incoming freshmen.
“That was our goal [with the program],” says John Kelly, “to use it as a magnet to draw ultra-bright kids and have them be able to work together and learn from each other and then surround them with what we call the support system.”
The network of Kelly/Strul scholars has only grown since 2017, in ways that not even Strul could have predicted. In 2018, students formed the First and Proud club, an organization dedicated to fostering support and success among first-generation college students. It’s this social aspect of the program that Strul feels is just as foundational as education.
“With very good social skills, you can always ask and self-learn, and that, to me, is what we try and build up in the Kelly/Strul program,” says Strul, who never ceases to be impressed by the progress of the program’s scholars.
“I’ve seen kids that could barely say a word, they were so nervous,” he says. “When you see them in two years, the confidence in them, that’s when I know we’ve got successful students. Because when you believe in you, truly believe in you, you’ll achieve anything your mind and grit wants you to do.”
This story is from the May/June 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
