Features

By Josh Cohen l'08

 

Four years at Guilford tends to have a profound effect on a lot of students. They study under the tutelage of progressive teachers, amidst opportunities for volunteering and in difficult classes that encourage struggle with important social concepts—at an institution that steers itself with community-minded core values no less.

For many graduates, the perfect job is not the one with the six-figure salary or the strongest 401k offerings, but the one that will allow them to make the greatest positive impact on a problem-ridden world.

Dreaming about a career in philanthropy and having a career in philanthropy can be two very different things–a fact to which job-hunting, anxiety-ridden seniors and graduates can easily attest. But a fulfilling–and even lucrative–philanthropic career can be had in a wide variety of fields.

The proof is in the success Guilford graduates have been having for years, in traditional nonprofit organizations as well as for-profit businesses and government policy work.

 

Two Washington, D.C., alumni work in very different areas of philanthropy, Hirsch for the Office of Rural Health Policy and Gergely for the American Red Cross

 

INSPIRED TO HELP

Former sociology and anthropology professor Kathryn Schmidt’s impact on Leise Gergely ’06 was large and lasting. “Kathryn Schmidt definitely had a lot to do with my path through college and after,” said Gergely. “I took (her class in) Social Problems my first semester freshman year and I was like ‘huh ... this is cool.”

Before arriving at Guilford, Gergely planned to major in political science and become a lobbyist. Since graduating she has worked for four nonprofit organizations in Florida and Washington, D.C., where she currently works in corporate development for the American Red Cross.

Though Dan Whitley ’05 was already influenced by his social worker mother and pastor father, it was Max Carter’s capstone class about community development that set him on the path to his current job as volunteer coordinator at Pwoje Espwa in Haiti.

“Max’s class got me interested in community development and the search for authentic community, which is integral to the work we do here at Pwoje Espwa,” he said.

Whitley found out about a volunteer trip to Pwoje Espwa in Carter’s class. After joining Jack Reynolds ’65, who is president of Pwoje Espwa’s American sister program Theo’s Work, and several other Guilford students on the trip, Whitley became a volunteer English teacher for the program. Following a year of that, he started as volunteer coordinator.

“I have been project coordinator for nearly two years now, working with doctors, agriculture specialists, engineers and college students on spring and summer break, coordinating their activities and helping them on their projects. I also have continued teaching, working on grants and projects, networking among NGOs and coordinating logistics.”

Whitley and his colleagues at Pwoje Espwa also run schools on a 150-acre farm called Hope Village, build houses, collaborate with a maternity clinic and serve meals for their residents, street kids, the elderly and the handicapped.

A FOR-PROFIT FOR CHANGE

With a background at two nonprofits in Durham, N.C., an AmeriCorps VISTA stint and a degree from the Columbia University Teacher’s College serving as her foundation, Miriam Biber ’02 started a small, community-minded business based out of the HIVE community center in Greensboro with Kammaleathahh Livingstone ’05. They focus on providing holistic health counseling and education and alternative healing to communities that might not necessarily have access to it otherwise.

“We’re not trying to work in the typical, bourgeois health-spa type of atmosphere,” said Biber. “So much of what we want to do is sustain the work of people who are doing good things in the world and empower people with information so they can make lasting, sustainable changes in their lives.”

Some of Biber’s work includes individual and group health counseling, educational grocery store tours and pantry makeovers, all with the underlying focus of self-care.

“Our goal is to support democracy by empowering different peoples’ voices and helping them live better lives,” said Biber. “Everything that’s in the HIVE is about raising awareness, educating people and empowering people.

POLICY FOR THE PEOPLE

At first mention, a government job in Washington, D.C., doesn’t scream community-minded service work, but Steve Hirsch ’80 has a job that helps people. He works at the Office of Rural Health Policy, the largest government body that deals with rural hospitals and healthy care. His office was created in the early 1980s after a health care crisis led to the closing of hundreds of rural hospitals.

“Medicare changed its payment system and it wiped out a bunch of rural hospitals. Between 1980 and 1982 about 400 rural hospitals closed,” said Hirsch.

With a $25 million budget at their disposal, the Office of Rural Health Care distributes money to rural hospitals to improve the quality of their care and ensure that they can stay open and functioning.

“It’s been remarkably successful. It’s been going for almost 10 years and 1,300 hospitals have converted to ‘critical access centers’ [very small hospitals that get 101 percent reimbursement for helping Medicare patients].”

“I got into this because I’m really interested in making sure people have access to health care, and our current system is far from perfect,” he said. “It is horribly expensive, it doesn’t provide care to 40 million-odd people who don’t have coverage and it kills a lot of people who could survive if they did have access to health care.”

These alumni are living illustrations that, whatever your background and motivations, wherever your desires lie, there is a path to follow for anyone who desires to help.

“Even now I feel like I am just getting started,” said Whitley. “I would encourage anyone thinking about going the long haul with this kind of work to find something that fits right. There are many paths to take, whether strictly development-focused, or looking at public health, medicine, agriculture, human rights law, journalism, education. There’s work for everyone.”

Josh Cohen '08 is a writer and living in the Washington, D.C., area. He was a reporter, editor and editor-in-chief at The Guilfordian from 2005-08.