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Connecting Ambition with Opportunity
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October 2011
Volume 2
Issue 10
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NYNY Spotlight
Fellow Spotlight
William
William studies psychology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and plans to pursue a career in clinical psychology. As a child, he immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong. In the U.S., his mother worked as well as volunteered. This selflessness motivated William to become a better person, and to find his true passion in helping others. His first step was to initiate an anti-bullying project, "I Care", which aims to help and support those who have been bullied. In addition to school, William works at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New York.
Mentor Spotlight
Brittain
Brittain Youngblood is a 2011 Mentor Coach and a member of the Young Leadership Board. She is currently Director of Strategic Advisory Services at Newmark Knight Frank.
Brittain joined Newmark Knight Frank in 2007 and works directly with President James D. Kuhn in her role. She primarily focuses on coordinating relations between Newmark Knight Frank's various services for strategic advisory clients, particularly commercial banks, special servicers and financial institutions. Brittain has also been responsible for managing key relationships and projects for clients in the government sector. In addition to advisory projects, she assists Mr. Kuhn with acquisition and disposition opportunities.
As a founding member of the Young Leadership Board, Brittain has devoted countless hours to creating and launching the New York Needs You program and securing resources for the organization. She has worked with her employer, Newmark Knight Frank, to provide NYNY with rent-free office space during the start-up phase, and then led the search for a larger office space as the organization grew over the last year. Most recently, Brittain showed her passion for the organization's success by winning the Young Leadership Board fund raising challenge; she was the top fund raiser from the group securing over $30,000 in corporate, foundation and individual support for the 2011 NYNY Benefit Dinner! Today, Brittain also serves as a Mentor Coach to Tetyana in the 2011 Fellows class.
Thank you, Brittain, for all that you have done and continue to do for NYNY. We greatly appreciate your efforts and support!
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Dear friends of NYNY,
The momentum continues to build on the heels of our successful fundraising benefit! We are especially excited to announce new additions to the NYNY team! - Joe Pinto - Joe joins us as the Vice President of the Community College Initiative. Joe co-founded the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, a New York City public high school, and was most recently the Executive Director of its nonprofit support organization, the Adams Street Foundation. Later in this newsletter, Joe describes our exciting progress with the Community College Initiative and our partnership with CUNY and Abor Brothers. We believe this effort will have a significant, scalable impact to increase numbers of community college students who graduate with Associate's Degrees and transfer to Bachelor's Degree programs.
- LaShawnda Brooks - LaShawnda joins us as a Program Coordinator. LaShawnda was most recently a social studies teacher in Atlanta as a Teach For America corps member and joins our team of expert educators who oversee our Fellowship program.
We are excited to have them both lend their considerable experiences and energy to further our mission. Please welcome them when you see them at the next NYNY event! I am also pleased to announce the new members of the Mentor Leadership Council: Vincent Barr, Matt Heiman, Vittal Kadapakkam, Mariel Kriss, Vivian Liu, Jonathon Alexander, Jason Price, Tia Cummings and Matthew Schwieger and the election of Keith Putnam-Delaney and Anneka Anand as the new YLB Co-Chairs. I want to thank Gavin Myers and Tiffany Meriweather, the former YLB Co-Chairs for their service to NYNY! We are proud that the YLB and the MLC, which are at the heart of our uniquely volunteer driven model, continue to attract such dedication and talent. And finally, I'd like to thank all who pitched in for our clothing drive. In just a few days, we were able to collect more than 1,000 items of clothing for our Fellows. It was extremely heartening to see the renewed confidence and pride displayed by our Fellows as they began to look their professional best to prepare for their fall interviews. The NYNY community continues to come through for our Fellows, in ways big and small. Thank you for helping it all add up and build. PJ Kim Executive DirectorNew York Needs You |
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NYNY Introduces the Community College Initiative!
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NYNY's Community College Initiative (CCI) will be the largest volunteer mobilization of its kind. By engaging New York City's prized university system and NYNY Mentor Coaches as co-instructors and persistence coaches, the Initiative will ultimately lead thousands of young people - who might otherwise have struggled without the right resources and support - to Bachelor's Degrees and empowering careers. And it has reflected NYNY's core values at every stage of development.
The idea came from entrepreneurial NYNY Fellows who, working with Mentor, Career and Life Coaches, saw a social problem and believed there were ways for our service model to confront it.
Initial planning has truly proceeded in the NYNY spirit of partnership. The City University of New York (CUNY) has been an enthusiastic participant in, and visionary driver of, important first conversations, from which preliminary concepts of mission, structure and timeline have emerged. Our Governing Board, Mentor Leadership Council, Young Leadership Board and the many entities they represent across corporate, non-profit and governmental lines provide a steady stream of advocacy, resource power and strategic thinking. And NYNY is thrilled to announce a collaboration with Arbor Brothers (www.arborbrothers.org), whose expertise will help sharpen our design and implementation processes.
Community college students are among society's greatest yet least nurtured assets, and NYNY stands to define how support from outside the education sector can engender their success.
For more information on the Community College Initiative, please contact Joe Pinto at joe.pinto@newyorkneedsyou.org.
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By the Numbers: MLC Clothing Drive!
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The Mentor Leadership Council (MLC) hosted its fall clothing drive on September 24, 2011. Check out some impressive stats from the day!
- More than 1,000 items were donated
- Fellows had their choice of professional clothing and accessories valued at a total of $10,000
- More than 75 donors contributed items to the drive
- 25 volunteers participated to help the day run smoothly
Thank you again to all who donated and volunteered, and to the MLC for organizing such a great event. A special thank you to Lord & Taylor for providing shopping bags for the Fellows! Because of your support, our Fellows have the resources and confidence to make a positive, lasting impression. We appreciate your generosity and hope you continue to stay involved!
"I believe that the clothing drive was a complete success. The clothing I picked during the drive will be used for future NYNY workshops. I would like to thank all our Mentor Coaches and volunteers; without them this event would not have been possible!" Mailenny, 2011 Fellow
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NYNY Partners with Teach For America!
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NYNY is excited to announce a robust new partnership with Teach For America (TFA). Teach For America's mission to eliminate educational inequity and to build a pipeline of talented leaders to fuel the broader education reform movement aligns with NYNY's mission to leverage the resources of New York city to prepare low-income, first-generation college students to realize their college and career potential. As part of this partnership, NYNY will be introducing Fellows and Mentor Coaches to the career-development opportunities TFA has to offer, and TFA will engage their extensive alumni network to help NYNY identify talented new staff members and volunteers.
To learn more about Teach For America and becoming a Corps member, consider joining one of their upcoming webinars.
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- 2011 Mentor Coach and MLC member Tia Cummings, on accepting a position as Marketing Director at L'Oréal
- 2010 Mentor Coach Marissa Ballan, on accepting a position as Associate Director, Owner Services at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.
- 2011 Fellow William, on accepting a position as Executive Assistant to the President at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New York
Think someone deserves to be congratulated? Email info@newyorkneedsyou.org with the subject line "Newsletter Congratulations!"
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