In the past year, the SCY/PAACT team has grown in many ways. We hope to familiarize partners with who is on the team and what they do – in the hopes of making SCY better conveners for community organizations.
Hi Kirstin! Thank you for taking the time to chat. Can you give a brief introduction of yourself and give us a little info about your background?
I am the Operations Coordinator for SCY and have been working with the team since July 2016. I have also spent some time on the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC) team, another program in the Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities. I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Communications degree. After graduating, I worked for a few years at a title insurance company before transitioning to Lurie Children’s.
What do you do every day at SCY?
To me, one of the best things about working with SCY is that every day looks a little different. I work on various projects in different capacities, all with different deadlines. It ranges everywhere from drafting the newsletter and email marketing/branding to social media and graphic design to planning all of the monthly training series events from start to finish.
What has been your favorite training or quarterly meeting?
In all fairness, seeing as how I plan and coordinate the events, I really do enjoy all of them. Not to mention, we’ve had a lot over the last four years! But if I had to pick my top three it would include the trainings on Healthy Masculinity, Social Justice Communications and Vicarious Trauma. I personally learned a lot from each of these and they included valuable interactive group work for participants – which they loved. And when partners respond well to a certain training, it makes me really happy.
If you had to change careers what would you want to do?
I think I would become a teacher. I have always loved working and interacting with kids directly. There is some kind of unexplainable joy I get when spending time with them and seeing them learn. But I also recognize it is one of the toughest jobs on this planet and have nothing but the utmost respect for teachers of all kinds, including parents/caregivers, mentors, and coaches. Kids know how to keep you on your toes and to me that is half the fun!
If you could have any superhero power, what power would you have and why?
My superhero power would definitely be to fly. I love traveling to new places and having new experiences, but I don’t do it as often as I wish I could. The biggest bonus would be to be able to see loved ones who live far away whenever I want.
