Building a Career Through Service, Strategy, and Mentorship: The Unique Value of the FAO Schwarz Fellowship
A cornerstone of the FAO Schwarz Fellowship is the combination of direct service work, strategic projects, and mentorship. Looking back on my Fellowship experience years later, I have reflected on how these key elements have had a positive impact on my career.ย
I currently work at uAspire, an organization focused on college affordability and financial aid utilizing multiple approaches: advising students, training practitioners, advocating for policy changes, and creating custom solutions through consulting projects.ย
As a Fellow, my direct service work was advising students on college and financial aid. My strategic project work included supporting other areas of the organization: I did research about changing financial aid policies, supported with grant writing, and helped develop new trainings to expand the knowledge of my fellow advisors.ย
My career trajectory at uAspire started with my FAO Schwarz Fellowship, and progressed into program and people management, followed by data and curriculum management, and now, managing evaluation and learning. The Fellowship prepared me for the various roles Iโve held at uAspire over the last 10 years by:
1. Providing a positive environment for a โyesโ mentality
Fellowship roles sometimes fill the space in a nonprofit of the โI wish we had time to take on this important new workโ stream of work. This means you can really thrive if youโre a person who likes to say โyes, how can I help with that?โ. The FAO Schwarz Fellowship helped me build the confidence to lead projects and identify the opportunities to take a project even further.ย
This mentality led me to want to learn more about data and Salesforce in my early roles at uAspire when I saw opportunities to improve the program for students through data/technology. Building my data skills early positioned me well to take on my Director of Data & Impact role and my current role as Senior Director of Learning & Evaluation.ย
2. Grounding my perspective in direct service work
While overseeing uAspireโs advising curriculum, I spearheaded the founding of the organizationโs first-ever Student Advisory Group. My experience as an advisor doing direct service work helped spark the idea to start this group; I knew firsthand how students would have great ideas about how we could improve the advising program. Furthermore, the skills I gained as an advisor explaining FAFSA and other complex financial aid policies helped me be a strong facilitator of the group.ย
For this project, instead of explaining financial aid, I was explaining key decision points so that students could give input to improve program strategy. This foundation in direct service work, which I developed through the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, has proven to be critical for so many elements of my work.ย
3. Building my skills in mentorship
One way to contribute to a nonprofit is to support staff who may be more junior to you. The FAO Schwarz Fellowship centers mentorship as part of the experience, both providing Fellows with multiple mentors, but also allowing Fellows in their second year to mentor and support first-year Fellows. Therefore, mentorship was a skill I was able to establish and build early on. This allowed me to be successful as I stepped into people and team management for the first time.ย
This focus on mentorship has also shaped how I lead evaluation and learning work; one thing I always prioritize is training and supporting staff who are interested in growing their skills in data and evaluation. One example is through leading Salesforce training โ this has both been fun for me, and allowed staff to feel more confident utilizing data as a resource, resulting in tangible impacts to the organization.ย
Lately, I have been reflecting on my career as Iโve reached the 10 year milestone at uAspire. I have been lucky to have had many people support me throughout my career journey, and Iโm especially grateful for the FAO Schwarz Fellowship which offered me such a strong foundation early in my career.ย
Karen Wilber
Karen (she/her) is the Senior Director of Learning & Evaluation at uAspire and was an FAO Schwarz Fellow at uAspire from 2016-2018.
SHARE THIS STORY