Meet & Greet with the 2011 Corps

On Friday, November 19, close to a dozen alumni met and shared their testimonials with the current 2011 Greater Philadelphia Corps. The experiences and advice of a few of these alumni are captured below in these highlights.

Adam Schwartbaum

Adam Schwartzbaum is a third year law student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Born and raised in North Miami, FL, Adam went to college at Brandeis University, where he graduated with a B.A. in English & American Literature and Politics, and a minor in Theater Arts. After Brandeis, Adam moved to Washington DC, where he spent the summer working for his congresswoman and then began a year with City Year Washington DC.  After graduating law school this May, Adam will take the Florida bar and begin working as a first year associate at White & Case, a leading global law firm with an office in Miami.  Adam hopes to gain valuable experience in the private sector while continuing to do service through the firm's significant commitment to pro bono. 

Adam believes that City Year was one of the most important experiences of his entire life.  He continues to appreciate new ways to employ the skills he developed while a corps member. One of the most important skills he gained was the ability to work with teammates to solve problems too large for one person to solve alone.  While doing service, it was sometimes difficult to see past the daily challenges and stresses of working so closely with his teammates for such long hours for so little pay.  Looking back, Adam realizes that overcoming these challenges taught him invaluable lessons about leadership and cooperation, and empowered him to more successfully serve the Washington DC community.  After City Year, Adam also gained a better appreciation of how successfully City Year is able to truly bring different people together to create a common culture that is nurturing and idealistic. Thinking back on the promise of his own corps gives Adam hope for our country's future, and continually reaffirms his faith in the power of national service.   

Dallas Shumaker

Dallas Shumaker was a part of the 2001-2002 Greater Philadelphia Corps. From Malvern, PA, Dallas is currently studying political science with a focus on legal studies at Eastern University, located in St. Davids, PA. Upon completion of her undergraduate degree, Dallas is planning on attending graduate school for her Masters Degree in Non-profit Management. Her corps year was one of incredible personal growth and learning. The one piece of advice that she wishes someone had told her would be, live in the moment. You can rehash and debrief at the end of the year, but never again will you be able to experience the first year a second time. Her advice to the current corps in Philadelphia is, “Be in every moment: with the kids, with your team, with yourself. It'll never be better than this day. And learn patience. It’s the one thing that will get you through the year.”

Megan Rooney

Megan Rooney is a proud alumna of City Year Greater Philadelphia’s ’07-’08 and ’08-’09 corps. When Megan graduated from the University of Nebraska in the spring of 2007, she thought that she wanted to be a social worker, but she wanted to test-drive this type of job, a career of service, through AmeriCorps. Megan saw City Year as a great way to have an adventure outside of the Midwest, to have the opportunity to work with students in serious need of mentors, and to make sure that she was capable of doing the work. She viewed CYGP as a one-year stop in her life’s travels and assumed that she would be headed back to Chicagoland, where she grew up.

Instead, Megan fell in love with Philadelphia. The service CYGP does in schools and in communities introduced her to people and places in Philadelphia she would never have had the chance to get to know without the red jacket. As a corps member, Megan served at Olney West High School, where one of her very talented seniors convinced her to stay on for a second year of service. Rather than go straight to college, her student opted to do a year of service himself. He wanted to know more about what he was capable of, and figured that CYGP was a great way to push and develop himself. With his application for and acceptance into CYGP’s ’08-’09 corps, she decided that her service was not complete.

Megan rejoined for a senior corps year, serving with the recruitment department. It was another year of learning. As an office-based senior corps member focused on outreach, she learned more about the broader scale impact of City Year and the national service movement. Megan fell more in love with the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. She declined the graduate programs that she had deferred from the previous year and opted to attend the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice.

Megan will finish her Master of Social Work degree this spring. Her development at City Year has contributed to the success that she has had in graduate school.

The work done in classrooms and on service learning Saturdays with her Young Heroes team gave Megan a good foundation for the social justice work she is keen to undertake. The balancing act of City Year’s multiple hats and personal life prepped Megan in the time and stress management that she needs in order to balance school work, her three-day-a-week internship, her part-time job with Aramark—a position gained through City Year’s partnership with the company—and her friends and family.

Megan has had the opportunity and privilege to serve with City Year Greater Philadelphia as a corps member and as an alumna on CYGP’s signature service days. She looks forward to many other opportunities to continue to do so.