Las Vegas City Wire

The 2022 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Alumna of the Year is being lauded for creating a proposal that aims to maintain the health of Southern Nevadans.

According to UNLV's News Center, Crystal Rose Schulz is a mortgage broker and real estate investor by day, but it’s the Crystal Rose Schulz Healthy Homes and Public Health blood lead level initiative that has made her stand out among her peers.

“Nevada is one of the lowest screened states for blood lead levels,” Schulz told UNLV's News Center. “Lead poisoning prevention and detection is one of the most readily available and easiest interventions we can do to help all Nevadans reach their full potential.”

Aside from checking blood lead levels, the program aims to help Southern Nevadans find secure housing.

For Schulz, the decision to attend UNLV was no-brainer.

“When looking at colleges, I applied to UNLV and was accepted," she said, according to UNLV's News Center. "But at that point, I had never been to Las Vegas. I had heard stories of the Wild West and had a vision in my head from movies, but didn’t really know what to expect. When I finally came to visit the campus in December 2005, it was 60 degrees as the sun was setting. As the cotton candy sky gave way to the lights of the Las Vegas Strip, I knew I was home.”

Schulz began her educational career at UNLV with the objective of pursuing a nursing career but realized that wasn’t where her heart was.

"I went back to my original plan of studying nutrition, then went into fitness, health and back to nutrition. At one point during my undergraduate studies, I aspired to do pharmaceutical sales. But after going to work for WIC (a national, federally funded nutrition program for women, infants and children), I knew I wanted to pursue public health further, especially in Southern Nevada."