City Year alumni take many different paths after their corps year. No matter what path our alumni take, the skills and experiences that they have as a City Year corps member prepare them for any career they wish to pursue.
To learn more about what City Year alumni are up to now, check out these alumni profiles:
Villamor Asuncion '04 & '05, City Year New York
Assistant Brand Manager, Proctor and Gamble
Q: What skills or lessons did you take away from your City Year experience?
A: The patience and faith I experienced through my City Year manager and mentor proved to be indispensable to my career trajectory, more so than any other experience in my education or professional life to date. Through the emphasis placed on 360 feedback, understanding of other people, and diversity training, I learned about humility at a young age. I strongly attribute this to the success I have had in my career trajectory.
Q: What lessons from City Year did you bring to your work as a brand manager?
A: At City Year, I learned the mantra, “the first thing you’ll lose is sleep and the second is perspective.” In my corps year, I vowed to never lose perspective and I hold onto this promise today. I believe that 99% of problems in life or in business are problems because of how we frame them. Maintaining perspective on the bigger picture helps me to balance my time and remain productive by focusing on the things that can really make an impact.
How did your experience at City Year influence your career path?
A: Before I served with City Year, I thought I would go to law school. Through my work with, and exposure to, City Year’s corporate partners, I saw my first glimpses of corporate social responsibility. I saw that it’s possible to work at the intersection of mission and profit and stay true to what I believe in - improving the world and people’s lives.
Nosa Osai '10 & '11, City Year Chicago
MBA Candidate, Illinois Institute of Technology - Stuart School of Business
Q: What did you value most about your City Year experience?
A: I valued the opportunities that I got – from leading teams, to working on various projects to creating process, and more. City Year gives a lot of responsibility to young people. That level of responsibility at our age is hard to come by. I also valued the people I met – from my teams to my peers, to the politicians and community members I got to work with.
Q: How did your City Year experience prepare you for graduate school?
A: While in City Year, I had the opportunity to network with politicians, business leaders and many others and develop my professional communication skills. I was able to improve my public speaking and group leadership through the opportunities that I never thought were available to someone in their early twenties. In my experience, the skills that one can gain from City Year are transferable from the business world to the arts world, and at every point in between.
Chelsea Badeau '99, City Year Chicago
Executive Producer of Xfinity.com, Comcast
Q: What skills or lessons did you take away from your City Year experience?
A: City Year gave me a chance to learn how to work constructively with a team of people on important projects. I became the project leader of my team, which helped me prepare for the work I do now as Executive Producer of Xfinity.com. The teambuilding skills I learned have been crucial in helping me understand the best ways to work with different types of people and resolve conflicts effectively.
Q: How do you think being a corps member gave you an edge in your job interviews?
A: During my time as a City Year corps member and project leader, I interacted with many different types of people and the skills I developed during that time helped me be able to present myself in a more professional manner and know how to approach different situations effectively.
Brendan Lehan '11 & '12, City Year Boston
Strategy and Operations Business Analyst, Deloitte
Q: What was the pathway from City Year to Deloitte like?
A: During my senior corps year I was paired with a senior consultant through the City Year/Deloitte mentorship program. He advised me with multiple aspects of my job search - resume writing, interview preparation, and writing cover letters. It was through my conversations with him and others at Deloitte that I discovered that consulting would be a great fit for my skills and an opportunity for professional growth.
Q: How did your experience at City Year influence your career path?
A: Before City Year, I was very interested in policy and how it is made. My City Year experience shaped my understanding of the critical role implementation plays in policy and shifted my interest to how change is made in organizations and elsewhere. Consulting emerged as a meaningful way to explore that question while approaching a wide variety of challenges.
Q: What skills or ideas from your City Year experience do you plan to bring to Deloitte?
A: I will bring my ability to work on and to lead diverse teams, with diverse ways of thinking. At City Year, I was working on teams to create value for urban schools and their students in an environment that was often very ambiguous, without clear solutions and with many different stakeholders. I learned to work with my team to problem solve, to identify the real need and find the solution to meet the needs of all parties and ultimately improve student academic and behavior performance.