DANBURY, CONN. — ECAC Hockey is proud to announce Princeton’s Ani Kozak as the 2025-26 Project Rousseau Community Service Award winner for ECAC women's hockey.
The Project Rousseau Community Service Award recognizes an ECAC Hockey student-athlete who demonstrates qualities of compassion and service to either one organization or a variety of volunteer activities within a single school year. The award recognizes and honors an exceptional student-athlete who makes volunteerism and community service a way of life.
Kozak has made an impact both on and off the ice, having played in 74 career games to date, heading into her senior year. Kozak is majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Entrepreneurship and is a two-time ECAC All-Academic Selection.
In November of 2024, Kozak co-founded Hockey for Hayastan, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to growing the sport of ice hockey in Armenia by connecting local youth with Armenian-American mentors and coaches. In June of 2025, Kozak and her fellow co-founder organized and led an international service initiative, hosting a free youth hockey camp in Yerevan, Armenia, providing elite coaching, mentorship, and equipment access regardless of financial means. The initiative lasted for five days, with about 30 children participating throughout the week. They have been invited to return to Yerevan this summer, where they plan to lead the camp again. From May to August in 2025, Kozak interned at Let Her Play, a nonprofit organization focused on closing the gender gap through sport and community engagement. The organization supports girls in sport by connecting them to opportunities, mentors, and programming that fosters leadership and confidence. Kozak developed a social networking platform and onboarding systems to strengthen mentorship, leadership opportunities,and athlete engagement for girls and women in sports.
During her time at Princeton, Kozak is an active member of the Princeton Armenian Society, fostering cultural awareness, community engagement, and connection among Armenian students and allies. At the same time, she is the co-president of the Student-Athlete Service Council at Princeton, where she coordinates and participates in athletics-based volunteer opportunities, supporting service initiatives in partnership with the Princeton Varsity Club and the local Princeton community.
About Project Rousseau
Project Rousseau is a non-profit organization that helps young people in communities in the highest need to reach their full potential and excel through higher education. We primarily serve refugee and asylum-seeking youth and families, homeless youth, and reservation-dwelling Native American youth. We provide four pillars of programming to holistically address the needs of our beneficiaries: 1) Student Needs (Legal Services and Social Services), 2) Academics, 3) Community Service, and 4) Broadening Horizons.
Founded in 2011 as a one-to-one mentoring program for young people in the Harlem community, Project Rousseau has grown based on two guiding principles: to serve the absolutely highest need young people we can possibly find, and to continuously grow our services to meet all of the needs of the young people we serve. Overall, we serve over 2500 youth and families. Our students go onto attend Ivy League Schools, MIT, Stanford, and many other universities, while others go onto community college and to pursue extraordinary vocations. We also have a program in which we hire our own beneficiaries, for they are the ultimate experts in their communities and our services.
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