City of Philadelphia

I initially came to the City of Philadelphia as a VISTA leader through the City’s Serve Philadelphia VISTA Corps Program. Serve Philadelphia place AmeriCorps VISTA members in City departments to help build capacity on projects that address poverty. Two years after my year of service, I returned to the City as a volunteer coordinator in the Mayor’s Office of Education.

My time in city government has made me a seasoned project manager, with a proven ability to manage projects that involve multiple internal departments and external partners simultaneously.

Mayor’s Office of Education

Community Schools & Philly Reading Coaches Volunteer Coordinator (2023-2025)

As a volunteer coordinator, I worked with 20 Community Schools to recruit and onboard volunteers for free food distributions, Philly Reading Coaches afterschool program, and other school events as needed. As the first person in this role, I created and launched a centralized orientation program that gained over 800+ signups between December 2023 to July 2025.

Communication materials I developed include:

• Penned “Making Spirits Bright: Volunteers Driving Change Across Philly” for the City website to recap the December 2024 volunteer appreciation event.

• Created a volunteer hub, a one-stop-shop with orientation recordings, FAQs, and required paperwork.

VISTA recruitment

Recruitment for the Serve Philadelphia VISTA program was fully virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I managed the creation of the promotional toolkit by delegating projects to the VISTA Outreach Committee and proofreading content.

I also:

• Wrote a blog post for the City’s website to promote open house events.

• Utilized Microsoft Publisher to design a full-year packet and summer packet that detailed program and position descriptions (*Graphic on the packet was created by Grace Park).

• Created the summer social media toolkit (*Graphics for the toolkit and packet cover were created by Grace Park).

This resulted in successful recruitment for 65+ VISTA Positions.

2021 VISTA Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are end of the year presentations where AmeriCorps VISTA members give an overview of their projects, the challenges they overcame, and highlight their accomplishments. I assigned event roles, scheduled 50 presentations, and created the communications plan for the 5-part event. There were 260 RSVPs across the 5 events.

For the VISTA Lightning Talks I:

• Prepared an eBlast template and scheduled listserv emails since my last day was after the second Lightning Talk.

• Created a social media toolkit (*Graphics were created by Kayla Urquhart).

• Wrote a blog post for the City’s website.