personal

THE TIME HAS COME! I have begun applying for nonprofit faculty jobs. I am super excited about this process and anxiously awaiting what is to come.

My faculty advisors and mentors have been very helpful to me during this process. They have provided me with feedback, encouragement, and awesome reference letters to include in my job application packets.

If you know of a nonprofit faculty job opening or if you work for a nonprofit master's or undergraduate degree program that is hiring, please let me know!! Any referral during this process would be much appreciated. This process has also helped me to look deeper into myself and truly articulate why I do what I do. Here's a section of my job application packet: My personal statement.

Personal Statement

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
-Confucius

Many people are passionate about the mission of their organizations, or their nonprofit’s cause, but I am different. I am passionate about helping people run more effective nonprofit organizations, and helping people pursue nonprofit careers. I feel lucky that I found my passion at such a young age.

As a child I was in girl scouting for eleven years and I earned my gold award (the highest award in girl scouting) through 300 hours of community service within nonprofit organizations. This experience instilled in me a commitment to community service and a dedication to nonprofit organizations. As an undergraduate student I earned a Certificate in Nonprofit Management through American Humanics and then went on to work in a variety of nonprofit settings. I worked for two different nonprofit organizations while I earned a Master’s of Management in Nonprofit Administration from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois. My education gave me the practical skills to succeed in the nonprofit management jobs that I held. Through my work as a nonprofit manager, I developed a Nonprofit Operations Toolkit, and I was interviewed by the national women’s Blogging website Blogher, that touted me as being a “Nonprofit Operations Guru.”

My nonprofit management education also provided the theoretical tools to understand the nonprofit sector as a whole. Because of this understanding and my enjoyment of networking, I have participated on a variety of national nonprofit committees including the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition, the Nonprofit Congress, and the Independent Sector’s NGen Initiative.

I chose to enroll in an interdisciplinary PhD program at the University of San Diego to become a nonprofit professor and learn how to effectively teach nonprofit managers. During my PhD program, which included substantial theoretical training, I developed my teaching skills and the ability to do methodologically sound research. My PhD program, as well as my experiences as a nonprofit manager, prepared me to continue helping people run more effective nonprofit organizations and pursue nonprofit careers.

Interested in learning more, check out my Vita

I rarely write personal posts about my life but I think its fitting on Valentines day to give a snap shot of the other side of my life--my personal life.

I've been married for 8 years to a wonderful man. My marriage is not your average marriage. I see my husband 3 days of the week and for the majority of our marriage, he has worked in another city or state then where we live.

I must have a lot of flexibility in my personal life and that is probably why I seek structure in my work life. My husband gets his schedule a week before the new month starts and I never know in advance which three days of the week he'll have off. He works almost every holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, 4th of July etc). I try to be as flexible as I can and spent at least one full day a week at home with him, but that is challenging sometimes due to being a student and the fact I have classes many nights a week. I would love to see my husband all the time, sleep in the same bed with him every night of the week, but that is just not possible. I made this choice and I have no regrets. I love my husband deeply. He is caring, patient, and ALWAYS meets me where I'm at.

My husband was in the military when we first met. We started dating while I was going to college in Missouri and he was stationed in San Diego. When I transferred to San Diego State University, he was subsequently transferred to Chicago. After we got married I moved to Chicago and we had two wonderful years living in the same town. Then when he got out of the military we moved back to the Bay Area. My husband started flight school and got a job instructing in the central valley of California. He would work/live in the central valley during the week and come home on the weekends. Then he got a job flying for an airline in Houston, TX and I got accepted into the PhD program in San Diego. He's been commuting from San Diego to Houston ever since. In case you are wondering, even if I lived in Houston I would only see him 3 days a week because he flies all over the country and stays in a different city every night.

Our relationship has been through 2 six month deployments when he was in the military and countless days apart, it hasn't been easy--we miss each other a lot--but one thing remains true, we trust each other, we love each other, and God is our anchor. The statement "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is certainly true in our relationship. I'm thankful this Valentines day because my husband is coming home and that is the best Valentines Day gift I could ever receive!

As many of you read in my post last month I had quite a transformational summer and I've being doing a lot of introspection lately. Last week when I arrived in DC for the Nonprofit HR Conference and sat down for a delightful dinner with my dear colleague Rosetta Thurman, she inspired me and reminded me that I can still blog even if my posts are more introspective.

So here it goes, here are some of the things I'm reflecting on right now.

• I've spent so many years trying to prove myself and get a ton of work experience, I've often sacrificed my personal needs in the process. I am starting to take care of myself and take time to reflect and think through activities and projects I take on or say yes to. This is really difficult for me because my passion for nonprofit work is my strength and my weakness. I often do too many things at once.
  

• My husband and I would like to start a family. This is something we've put off for years because my career has been more important to me. Even though many working mothers have paved the way ahead of me, I am still worried about how I'll be able to balance it all. I still want to be a tenure track professor or a full-time nonprofit employee along with being a mom. I've read numerous books on working moms, (some can be found here, here, and here) yet this still feels like the biggest decision of my life.