Public Interest/Public Service – Page 5

A Day in the Life: General Counsel of a Non-Profit Corporation

Read Brandon Fitzgerald’s archived tweet feed here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/BrandonFitzgerald_Feed.pdf

Next Tuesday, February 8th, we kick off our Spring edition of @PennCareerDay on Twitter! Brandon M. Fitzgerald (SAS ’93) will post throughout his day as the Vice President, Secretary & General Counsel of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, Inc. (MCCA). If you’re interested in a career in law, life at a non-profit corporation or diversity issues, then follow @PennCareerDay on the 8th! Learn about Brandon’s background below.

Brandon joined MCCA in March of 2008 and he handles all legal matters for MCCA including those related to its internet presence and MCCA’s Diversity & the Bar® magazine. MCCA’s mission is to advocate for the expanded hiring, promotion, and retention of minority attorneys by corporate law departments and the law firms that serve them. Since its founding in 1997, MCCA has emerged as a thought leader on diversity issues in the legal profession, and its expanded platform addresses diversity management issues involving generational diversity; women; the physically challenged; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lawyers; and lawyers of color.

Brandon spent the first portion of his legal career as an associate in the DC offices of several large, national law firms– including Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP. In private practice, his focus was on corporate transactions, securities, and finance.

Brandon has also served as in-house counsel to several multinational companies where he reported to the General Counsel and worked directly with senior management. His focus in-house was in the areas of finance, copyrights and trademarks, and corporate governance.

He is also the co-chair of the Washington Metropolitan Area Corporate Counsel Association’s Diversity Forum and is one of the originators of WMACCA’s Corporate Scholars Program. The Corporate Scholars Program began in 2004 and provides paid internships at WMACCA member corporations to diverse students attending law school in Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia.

Brandon received a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Videos: how to find an internship in…

Internship season is upon us and many students are coming to CS to learn about finding an internship. In addition to reviewing the advice & listings on our website, you can check out the videos of interviews conducted with your fellow students to get a first-hand look at the internship search process.

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Thinking about a government internship? Last Fall, we talked to four students who interned at NASA, Senate Banking Committee, Delaware Attorney General’s Office, and Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK). Here’s what they said about their jobs and how they found them:

Government Internships: Myths & Advice from Penn Career Services on Vimeo. (Thanks to my wonderful colleague Claire Klieger for putting together this video)

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For more videos like this on a variety of internships from start-ups to communications, visit the CS Internships Vimeo Channel. And I hope these videos will inspire some of you to conduct some informational interviews of your own.

Nonprofit Careers: Making a Living While Making a Difference

By Kelly Cleary

Sometimes students talk to career counselors as if they were making a confession. We often hear “I don’t want to be a doctor (or lawyer)” in almost a whisper so their parents in Long Island or LA can’t hear them. But sometimes, instead of a whisper, it’s a confident voice accompanied by averted eyes, as if to say, “I know this is crazy but…,” coming from a student who has made up his or her mind, but isn’t sure how friends and family will take the decision. She wants to join the Peace Corps, he wants to write a screenplay, she wants to go to culinary school, or he wants to do conservation work in Alaska. In any case, I love meeting with these types of students because instead of committing to a future career they feel lukewarm about, almost guaranteeing themselves a future case of the Sunday evening blues, they’ve identified something they really care about and enjoy. The next step is simply (or not so simply) helping them find a way to make a living while pursuing their passion. Pursuing a career in the nonprofit sector can be one great way to pursue your passion while making a living.

Yes, you can support yourself and make a living while working for a nonprofit. It’s true salaries in nonprofits tend to be quite a bit lower than salaries in the for-profit and even government sectors, but once you’ve reassessed your budgetary needs (Netflix is probably cheaper than cable; cooking is healthier and cheaper than ordering out; having a roommate means more money in your pocket, etc.), you can quickly realize you can make ends meet. And often, once you’ve proved yourself as a competent professional in a nonprofit, especially if you work for an organization that offers tuition assistance for graduate school, your salary will increase. All the while you’ll be supporting a cause you really care about, working with people who care about the same issues, and usually having a pretty great work-life balance.

For more information about pursuing a nonprofit job, attend tomorrow’s workshop:

NONPROFIT CAREERS 101 workshop (Wednesday, November 17, 5:00-6:00pm, Civic House Living Room)

This event is designed to help you better understand the non-profit sector and assist you in navigating the job search in the public interest. The session will demystify some of the myths about careers in the public interest as well as help you better determine which job opportunities to pursue, and how best to go about attaining them. The session will also introduce you to resources both on campus and the web. (CO-SPONSORED BY CAREER SERVICES & CIVIC HOUSE)

For additional information about nonprofit careers read the The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for First-time Job Seekers or The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for Sector Switchers. Also, keep an eye out for several nonprofit-related career fairs co-sponsored by Career Services in Spring 2011 including the Not-For-Profit Philadelphia Fair, the Not-For-Profit & Public Service Fair at Columbia, and the Philadelphia Nonprofit Fair co-sponsored by Idealist.org.

A Day in the Life: Urban Public School Reformer

Read Janel Forde’s archived tweet feeds here: Day 1 and Day 2

In the next two weeks, we welcome alumna Janel Forde who will post about another career path in education – urban public school administration. Follow @PennCareerDay on Twitter on November 8th, and then again the week of November 15th. Don’t miss out on what Janel’s days are like!

Janel works for Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in America with over 400,000 students, almost 700 schools and a $6bn operating budget. For the past year, Janel has worked in the CEO’s Office as the Director of Stimulus Programs. In that role she served as the district’s single point of contact for all stimulus related initiatives and helped to develop the state’s Race to the Top application ($400M) as well as the district’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant which was the district’s largest competitive grant award to date, $34M. She has also led several strategic projects for the office. Prior to joining the district, Janel was a consultant in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office. She specialized in the financial services sector and functionally in process management and strategy development.

Originally, from the east coast, Janel has worked in marketing and business development at American Express and in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, all in New York. Janel earned her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her undergraduate degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

A Day in the Life: International Health Recruiter

Read Kate Theirs’s archived tweet feed here: Day 1 and Day 2

There are many opportunities for those of you interested in international and/or health-related careers. If you find the right organization, you can apply a broad range of your talents and have a career that serves your passion for international relations and/or healthcare. Our next alumni on @PennCareerDay will highlight one of these career paths on Tuesday, October 19th and Tuesday, October 26th. These two days on @PennCareerDay are alongside a line-up of programs and events geared toward international opportunities. For more information on these events, click here if you’re an undergraduate or here if you are a graduate student. Read more below on Kate Thiers who will be posting for @PennCareerDay during these weeks, and don’t forget to follow to see what her day is like!

Kate Thiers (W ’00) is the Operations Manager for Africa Health Placements (www.ahp.org.za), a Johannesburg-based non-profit company that places foreign and local health workers in rural public hospitals in southern Africa. Since inception in 2005, AHP has placed over 1,750 doctors in southern Africa, over 900 of whom are foreign nationals. Kate’s team manages all finance, IT, HR, marketing, PR, website and orientation activities for all AHP offices, which include Johannesburg, Durban, Swaziland, Lesotho, the UK and the US.
Prior to moving to South Africa in November 2009, Kate was a Project Manager with Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in London. There, she was a project administrator for a European-wide corporate merger project for one year and subsequently managed a new partnership initiative with National Health Service (NHS) hospitals for a second year. In the US, Kate worked as a project manager for a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and managed large-scale application and infrastructure initiatives. She also worked as a business consultant for two years with Andersen Business Consulting.

Kate has an MBA from the Said Business School at Oxford University in the UK and a Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSE) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.