Q: Please introduce yourself and state your career.
>> My name is Catherine Genovese.
And I am executive vice president of the Second Mile,
and that is a private, non-profit that works with children, teens, and families.
Q: And what do you do with the children, teens, and families?
>> Well, we provide nine programs for children across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
They fall into the categories of prevention, early intervention, and community based programs.
And I would say that right now my role as executive vice president is predominantly chief operating officer.
I'm responsible for the day-to-day operations of the organization
in the areas of program administration and development,
but I began my career with the second mile more than 27 years ago
and my initial responsibility was working with one program, called the friend program,
which joined Penn State Students on the university park campus
with youngsters in the community who needed mentors.
Q: So can you take us through a typical day in your job? What's it like?
>> Well, one of the things I remember of my daughter who's a 23 year old Penn State Graduate,
when people would ask her what her mother did, she would say,
she talks on the phone and in some ways much of what you would see
if you were in my office was me making connections.
And some of that's on the phone.
Now some of it's email, text and in other ways.
I basically have responsibility for working with our staff and we have about 25 staff in four offices,
so I am often working with them on particular issues or obstacles
they might have in programming or fundraising
or hearing their ideas about how to streamline operations
or how to make a particular program more effective or to reach donors more effectively.
I do a great deal of the communications for the organization.
My undergrad degree from Penn State was in English,
so I have responsibility for our newsletter and many of our direct mail pieces
as well as work with communications interns that we get from across the state
who work on things like video development.
We have students right now who are interviewing second mile graduates across the state
and so I'm working with them to choose those graduates, edit, etc.
Q: What's a typical workweek like, hours wise?
>> It depends upon the workweek, but generally we're in our office during regular business hours.
Typically 9:00 and I tend to stay later, so 9:00-6:00, 9:00-6:30
and then we often have events that I attend outside of the workday.
For instance, we may have a weekend program for children that I attend.
This coming week we have a leadership institute that starts on a Sunday and ends the following Wednesday,
and in that case it's a 24/7 institute
where we basically have the kids come in from high schools from across the state
and they will be in residence at a local hotel
and they will have leadership training, so I will pretty much be there.
I now have moved up enough in seniority that I don't stay there overnight.
But I will spend most of my day there, from 8:00 in the morning until 9:00 in the evening at the institute.
Q: Now, do you travel a lot across the state of Pennsylvania for your job?
>> I tend to travel a fair amount because I'm often working in one of our other offices
or meeting with donors or committees in different parts of the state,
so I wouldn't say that travel is a daily part of my routine,
but I probably travel at least 2 or 3 times a month to different areas across the state.
Q: What do you love about your job?
>> Well, I think the thing I love most is the difference
that I see our organization making in the lives of children, teens, and families
and no matter how difficult things might become on any day-to-day basis,
all I have to do is watch one of those videotapes that we've just made where a student can say,
I don't know where I would be if the second mile hadn't been in my life, and that's an automatic pick me up.
Q: What about some of the challenges that you face?
>> Well, one of the significant challenges is our organization is wholly privately funded.
We made the decision a long time ago that we did not
want to take any government funds for our programs for children and teens
because we didn't want as a particular issue fell out of favor if runaways was the issue of the day, one day,
and if drug and alcohol issues were the issue the next day,
that suddenly we'd have a program one day and have to tell a kid the next day, there's no program.
Many of the students with whom we work have had broken promises in their lives
and we didn't want to become one more broken promise,
well that means on an annual basis we start with zero dollars and we need to raise that money
from individuals, foundations, corporations and through special events.
And in this current economy, our biggest challenge has been maintaining the funding
that we need to keep those promises to children.
Q: If someone would want to get into a similar career field like yours,
what would you say they could do to prepare themselves?
>> Well I think there are certainly a lot of things that they could do to prepare themselves.
I think one of the most significant things they could do
is volunteer at different places and volunteer often.
There are a lot of different ways to get involved in non-profits.
You can be involved in, for a larger non-profit,
just the communications aspect of the non-profit is large enough to have a communications arm.
There are almost always positions in non-profit development for the people that do the fundraising,
so certainly being involved, for instance, for a Penn State student,
getting involved in THON# and some aspect of THON# that appeals to the most,
whether it's communications or whether it's morale or whether it's donor solicitation
would be an excellent way to position themselves with some experience that no one else would have.
Q: Any type of college major?
I mean I don't think there's a non-profit college major,
but are there other ones that you think would be good?
>> Well certainly in our area, if you want to be on the program side of our organization,
those students would have health and human development majors for the most part,
psychology majors, sociology majors, crime, law, and justice education majors,
so majors that align with human services and the helping professions,
but in terms, the communications people,
we don't have enough funding for a full-time communications person,
but certainly having excellent oral and written communication skills
and having taken courses in that area would be positive.
And I would say our development staff really come from all different backgrounds.
They often are interested in sales and business,
but they are really dedicated to sales for a mission and so that's what brought them to the organization.
Q: You mentioned that you majored in English.
Did you, right after you graduated, did you start working for a non-profit or what?
>> No. I was an English teacher first, well I was an English major,
I was certified to teach and I worked I that field for probably about 3 years.
And it was while I was teaching that someone approached me to be first,
as I said, start with volunteering, a volunteer for our organization.
The organization was really small at the time.
We had two programs that served 45 kids in one office that was in a basement,
and now we have, as I said, four offices.
We reached 100,000 children across the commonwealth last year in all 67 counties,
so as the organization grew, I grew with it.
Q: Wow. Any final advice for someone who would be interested in getting into a role like yours?
>> Well, I think my final advice would be, no matter what you choose to do
and I work with probably 25 Penn State interns a year,
and some of them are really nervous about the fact that they aren't sure exactly what they want to do
and they feel like they should know and I always say to them,
no matter what age I am, there are so many things I'm interested in
and my Penn State degree provided me such a breadth of support for really being a good decision maker,
a good problem solver, a good communicator,
so I say, don't worry about what you want to do five years from now or ten years from now.
Be passionate about what you're doing now.
So I would say that don't worry about this long career trajectory.
If somebody had asked me when I graduated from Penn State if this is the position I was doing,
I didn't even know there were jobs like this
and if somebody had asked me when I started as an hourly person, working a few hours a week,
if this is where I'd be, I would have said, no, but it's 27 years later
and here I am and there used to be 1 1/2 people working in our office and now there are 25,
so I think you get involved with what you think you might love
and you test it out and make good decisions along the way.
Q: Great advice. Thank you so much for your time.
>> Thank you.