Roxy Rocks

I am a program associate at an NGO membership organization called InsideNGO. We train NGO professionals in finance and grant management and human resource management. We also host roundtables and an annual conference. My specific role is event management, web maintenance, marketing, and administrative duties. It is a tiny organization - 10 staff total and only 3 in our DC office.

I introduced Google Apps to my org when I started, specifically Google Forms and Google Sites to make it easier to track workshop and roundtable registrations and attendee feedback.

Another project I introduced, which they let me take and run with, is starting a Best Nonprofits to Work For list that we would research and publish annually because I used to work for the consulting firm that publishes Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work for in America list and HR Magazine's the 50 Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America list. I have started by helping PATH with their strategy to apply for the small & medium list.

It is a good way to start a career in the public sector and learn about how an NGO operates. At each workshop, after I make sure everyone is registered and signed in, has their breakfast and name tags, I get to sit in on the workshops and learn about the administration of USAID contracts and grants, which is great info for when I start my own NGO or go to work for a large foundation.

When my boss interviewed me for this position, he said, "I know we're small, so there's not much room for growth. But after 2 years if we don't have any work for you here, we have a lot of relationships with NGOs that we can help you get a job with one of them." Maybe it will be an NGO that I operate!

I'd love to learn new technology and techniques to organize communities in low-resource areas, like how to mobilize volunteers during an emergency for Save the Children or working with CARE to invest money in sustainable local businesses.

The people I hope to work with are women and children in Africa. When I was a volunteer English teacher in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia right after college, I visited a community of people who live together in a rural town. They pool their resources because they all live with HIV/AIDS. After hearing the women's stories about how they got infected and passed the disease to their children, I picked up one of the girls and carried her around. I returned her to her mother, and the mother asked me in Amharic, "When I die, will you take care of my children?" I honestly could not answer her. I hated that I basically said no, but I knew at 22 I could not promise to take care of her children. So I decided some day I would do something to help in some way.

Now, I want to learn how to organize a community's resources to help.

Become part of modernizing foreign assistance. If I cannot get an NGO started right away, I would find a job at a large, influential international NGO to put my new knowledge to work, like at Save the Children or CONCERN or my church's NGO. From that platform I would introduce new ways of operating, from marketing techniques, new technology, and income-generating local businesses. I would also use that organization's influence with the U.S. government to advocate for ways to modernize foreign assistance based on what I learn.

In college a few of my professors and some staff were being fired because they were either gay, attended a civil union for a gay couple, or wrote in our school newspaper in support of gay people. My college was run by my church, so because the faculty had signed an agreement when they were hired that they would uphold the church's values the university leadership had a right to fire them since our church believes homosexuality is a sin. I thought that was wrong.

With some friends I formed a student group because the faculty were afraid to speak out. We called ourselves Student Advocates for Communication and Change. We got petitions signed by students denouncing the Board's firing decisions. We hosted a forum where I got the dean to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to attend. We filled our largest auditorium with faculty, staff, concerned students and community members and discussed the rights of factulty at a church-operated university, academic freedom, and freedom of speech. Out of this the faculty decided to form a Faculty Senate since my college did not offer tenure. This gave the faculty more decision-making power and a collective voice. While my college's policies about homosexuality have not changed because our church's have not changed, I at least helped to organize faculty at an institution I care very much about. And if anyone knows faculty, they are not the easiest to organize. :)

For this and other work, I was honored with my school's Cords of Distinction, awarded to only 10 graduating seniors for a "significant and verifiable impact" on the university campus and beyond.

After I got back from Ethiopia I entered a master's in conflict transformation program and focused in organizational development in Virginia. I picked the program because it requires a practicum, which was a very practical way to learn how to become a leader at a nonprofit and eventually start my own.

One year of course work later, and a year more left to finish somehow, I moved to San Francisco to do my practicum because 1) SF is a cool city and 2) there are lots of nonprofits who need free labor.

In my search for the perfect practicum, I ended up getting a paid gig at the Great Place to Work Institute as the receptionist. I still had a whole semester of course work to finish and a practicum to find. I convinced the co-founder of the org and head of the Best Companies Team to let me fulfill my practicum by evaluating a few companies for their Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America list. Practicum, check.

But then after a few months working as the receptionist I was promoted to be a project coordinator on the Best Companies Team, where I got to do research for the lists full-time. I thought I had made it! No need to finish my master's degree - I got the job I wanted! I had emailed my professors and told them the good news. They told me I was crazy and I needed to finish the degree for that time to be worth anything. So I used my vacation days to finish the degree by flying back to VA for 2 classes and doing one long-distance.

It paid off because now I have an advanced degree and am now working to acquire experience to go along with it.

My mom has always told me and everyone who would listen that I must have missed the day in school when they taught us that the earth revolves around the sun and not around me. Maybe I was a little selfish growing up, or at least I came off that way to other people. How to change that reputation?

I astonished myself when right after college when I was 22 I moved all the way from Virginia to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to teach English at a public primary school for one year. I went because I wanted to go "somewhere in the African diaspora" - get closer to my roots. I knew nothing about the city, country, region, or continent. I ate raw ground beef called kitfo. I got worms. I got really depressed. I got my hair braided. I started English courses for the school teachers. I almost fell over in a squat toilet because the electricity had gone off and I was tipsy on honey beer. I held my birthday at the Addis Hilton and swam in a cross-shaped pool. I got hit on by several married men. I paid way too much for some batiks. I drank a lot of coffee. I also got to go to Djbouti and have a dress made at midnight from 2 sheets of fabric by a woman with a sewing machine on the street. I traveled all by my single girl self through Cairo. I got asked by a widow with HIV/AIDS to take care of her children when she dies.

I could have given up at any point and flown back home if I wanted to, but I stayed, lived in another culture, connected to my African ancestry and finally learned my physics lesson that the world does not revolve around me.

I wish that we in the NGO community would work with our new administration to establish a Cabinet-level Department for Global and Human Development in the next 8 years.

As it is now, large NGOs' budgets are pieced together from 20-30 various grants and contracts under 10 or more different federal departments or agencies, including USAID, HUD, Dept. of Ed, etc. plus private donations. What a mess! This means 10 more more different sets of rules to follow to operate, and 10 or more different audits and lots of wasted time and money. In addition, many of these agencies fall under the State Department. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure trained soldiers would be the best at weaving social networks to rebuild civil society post-conflict.

A singular, Cabinet-level Department for Global and Human Development would eliminate waste, redundancy, and put necessary focus on what's best for humanity: its dignity.

The most important thing to me right now is to find a way to start a smart NGO or work within an NGO to make it smart. I'm applying for this opportunity to help me find a way. I'm thinking that I'll need other amazing people to help out with that, so I have been telling my friends in person, via Facebook and also on the Personal MBA site forum, and my post already has 50 views. I found it more effective to create my app, then spread the message by asking others to join me. We'll see how it works out!