Global Peer Sydney: Who Am I?

Hello friends! My name is William Florentino, and this is my first blog post ever! I am excited to finally be writing to whoever is reading this right now. Today's topic will be about my professional experience.

My first job was a volunteer position at the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SFSPCA) Summer camp. I was a Junior Camp Counselor at this Summer camp, which required me to go through a selective training process to help alleviate the workloads of the paid Camp Counselors. The SFSPCA is a non-profit organization that requires volunteers to function properly. Without volunteers and charitable donors, the SFSPCA would not be able to exist at all.

I did not need to submit a resume for this position, as the SFSPCA Summer Camp was a feeder for young people who wanted to work for the SFSPCA in their immediate future. I showed drive, initiative, and interest around animal rights advocacy as an eighth-grader, and the administrators at the camp picked me to participate in their training sessions. Throughout my high school career, I volunteered over 300 hours to teaching children about animal rights, cleaning cages, feeding animals, and helping administrators better the camp experience for all.

My second job was a volunteer internship at Quest Clinical Research, a pharmaceutical testing lab, that researches experimental medications for HIV, Herpes, Hepatitis C, and many other harmful diseases. My mother is a pediatrician, and she was able to connect me to this internship. This internship lasted only a month, but I had very flexible hours and valuable work experience. I created an organized system of categories for medical testing kits and installed medical instruments in the office during my internship.

My third job was a volunteer position at NYU’s very own Carrasco Labs. Carrasco Labs is a CNS graduate research lab situated in the Meyer building on Washington Place. The head scientist at Carrasco labs is Marisa Carrasco, who instructed my First-Year Seminar: How We See. I approached Marisa with an interest in taking this job after the seminar concluded, as I was very interested in the course content. She helped me schedule an interview and subsequently offered me a Research Assistant Position at the lab. While my drive for studying Neural Science was only short-lived, this was valuable work experience nonetheless. I participated in several experiments conducted by graduate researchers and got certified by the CITI program for social/behavioral research with human subjects.

My fourth job was a volunteer position at a San Francisco non-profit organization called A Meal With Dignity (AMWD). AMWD seeks to feed the hungry and homeless, with a very ambitious mission statement of solving the pervasive issue of world hunger. As I joined the team, I immediately saw how distant this goal was and began brainstorming ways to advance this mission in a meaningful way. I am still working at AMWD as an Outreach and Special Events Manager.

My fifth job was the first to ever give me a paycheck. I acquired this job through Mayor London Breed’s Opportunities For All (OFA) program. OFA is a program that allows young people ages 13-24 to find paying work opportunities throughout San Francisco County. There were paying positions in arts summer camps, kitchens, coding camps, banks, the police department, the airport, and several private-sector tech companies such as Airbnb and Postmates. My position at Postmates HQ was a Civic Labs and Public Policy intern, and I utilized this position to extend a corporate partnership to AMWD. AMWD and Postmates are now Partners in Good. This partnership provided AMWD with the opportunity to scale to Nashville, TN. Previously, AMWD events were being held out of the executive director’s garage in San Francisco. I have been invited to return to this position in the Summer of 2020. This partnership was an enormous step forward in both my career and the future of AMWD, and I would not have been able to get where I am today without all of my previous professional experience.

Something you may notice is that I have spent most of my professional life volunteering, which many people do not have the ability to do (some people need paying work to make ends meet). Despite this, I am immensely proud of my volunteer experience, and demonstrate this pride to all of my hiring managers on my resume. My next blog post will be about volunteering, why it is a crucial part of my professional identity, and how it can help you expand your own.

Until then, I hope you have enjoyed my first blog post!