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Forbes
24-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Volunteering Is Leadership: Changing Lives, Including Your Own
Leadership Coaches Alison Tuiyott (left) and Jared Schain (right) Alison Tuiyott is a machine learning engineer at Cook Medical. Jared Schain is a Senior Manager of Distribution Strategy & Partnerships at Peacock, NBC's streaming service. They're also volunteers with Braven, the nonprofit I run. Schain and Tuiyott join us as Leadership Coaches; they lead our credit-bearing, career-accelerating course–Schain at City University of New York (CUNY), Tuiyott at Delaware State University (DSU). Schain and Tuiyott told us about the experience of leading the course–working with a small group of undergraduates, who we call Fellows, as they gain the knowledge, skills, confidence, and experiences to earn a strong first job. They're two of nearly 2,700 such coaches that have volunteered with Braven to date. 'You're not just volunteering to do good,' Schain says. 'You're really going to be pushed. You're going to want to do it again. And then you go back and you do a better job–and you still want to prove it, and you do a better job. And then after you do this for a few semesters, you still want to improve…you feel so committed to the vision of Braven.' Essential volunteers We're glad volunteers like Schain are committed to Braven's vision; their work is essential for helping Fellows land a strong first job after college or earn a spot in graduate school. Leadership Coaches like Schain and Tuiyott are trained to lead our Accelerator Course with a small cohort of Fellows. The Accelerator Course is open to all students at our partner higher education institutions, which have large numbers of students who are first in their families to go to college and are on the Pell Grant. Volunteers' work directly expands opportunity for Fellows. Nationally, just 30% of the 1.4 million first-generation college students or students from low-income backgrounds who enroll in college each year will land a strong first job or enter graduate school. We're proud to say the percentage of Braven Fellows who graduated with a strong first job or admission into graduate school is 18 percentage points above their peers nationwide. That's due to their own hard work, but our volunteers, like Schain and Tuiyott, played an instrumental role in their success. This volunteer month, Schain and Tuiyott's journeys are reminders that volunteering is a powerful act of leadership, impact, and professional development. Making change, meeting talented leaders Tuiyott joined Braven, in part, to help shape the next generation of leaders. Braven's Fellows are her younger sister's age. She knows they have so much potential. 'You know, every generation has their own set of leaders, and you never know who you're talking to and what they could become,' she says. 'I'm investing my time, yes, but I'm also investing in the next generation of leaders that could end up doing all sorts of incredible things.' She wants to make sure those future leaders know they belong. 'We're building a community of folks where we can talk about all of these post-grad situations,' she says. Schain finds that Braven helps expand his own community. He joined Braven in part to build his own network and get to know new people he might not have otherwise met. 'I get to meet people from all different backgrounds living in different boroughs, all at one time,' he says, 'getting that perspective-building.' Lightbulb moments As he expanded his own perspective, Schain helped Fellows see themselves in new ways. He remembers one particularly meaningful moment working with a Fellow on a key part of Braven's coursework–creating a strong resume. He'd shared his own resume with the class as an example, then hosted office hours to review students' resumes one-on-one. One student showed up a bit dejected. 'He was like, 'I'll never ever have a resume like yours. That is never gonna happen. I work at Foot Locker.' Schain knew this Fellow had strong skills and experiences to share. As part of Braven's course, he would teach students about how to tell their own stories, finding ways to demonstrate their strength through experiences they might have seen as unremarkable, or finding the power in challenges they overcame. Schain and this Fellow went line-by-line with the resume. They spent three hours, slowly combing through the Fellow's history and how he could frame his work. Working at Foot Locker wasn't a fancy internship, but it was an opportunity to demonstrate real leadership, time-management, organizational, and relational skills. Schain explains that he mostly asked questions, helping the Fellow find ways to quantify his impact. ''How many receipts did you go through? How many people did you talk to? … How many times do you solve a problem?....How many transactions did you process a day?' By the time they were finished, the Fellow had a whole new perspective on his resume. 'He left the session and he's like, 'I can't believe this is my resume. That's beautiful,'' Schain says. Tuiyott remembers resume-building sessions fondly, too. She led Fellows through Braven's coursework—they first worked on their own resumes, then pretended to be interviewers, reviewing sample resumes 'cold' and deciding who they'd choose to interview for a job. Some of the sample resumes were stronger than others, and it gave Fellows new motivation to work on their own. 'I could see the lightbulbs go off,' Tuiyott said. 'And finally, they were like, 'Oh, this is now why I need to care about my resume.'' A win-win As Schain and Tuiyott work with Fellows, they say they also learn. Schain says that his work as a volunteer strengthens his own leadership and his own professional skills. He says that being a Leadership Coach "is one of the most rewarding experiences you'll ever have. It's more than just signing up for a day. It's almost life-changing… I think the soft skills of leadership and confidence, all things you are teaching the students…they give you so many tools to improve yourself as a leader.' Tuiyott agrees. Before joining Braven, she had gotten the chance to develop her skills as a technical leader and expert, but she wanted to learn how to organize and motivate people. She was drawn to Braven both to give back and to develop herself. 'I was curious how you can lead outside of work, and getting some leadership development skills under my belt and really practicing that,' she explains. 'I learned so much from my Fellows…having empathy and also trying to meet people where they are some of the biggest things I learned.' Though leadership coaching is the most intensive way to partner with Braven, we offer many ways to volunteer, and find that most of our volunteers come away feeling like Schain and Tuiyott do. Our Mock Interviewers give a few hours of their time virtually on a single day, and provide young people with a low-stakes chance to practice job interviews. Our Professional Mentors provide one-on-one support in one-hour sessions over the course of twelve weeks. Both they and our Fellows come away changed. As Tuiyott puts it, volunteering her time with Fellows is time well spent. 'What is…two, three hours, four hours a week, if you could potentially be talking to someone who's going to end up remembering you down the line?' she asks. 'What is the impact that you're going to have in this person's life?'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New CT environmental regulations could create thousands of jobs; add millions to state coffers
Thousands of properties across Connecticut could become more attractive for redevelopment now that the state legislature has streamlined regulations for how properties are evaluated for potential contamination and cleanup — a major issue in a state with a deep-rooted industrial heritage. The legislature approved changes to the 'Transfer Act,' which since 1980 has set regulations for environmental testing of properties that were up for sale. The law has long criticized as dampening development because all properties at which 100 kilograms — about 220 pounds — of hazardous waste was dealt with in any one month had to undergo environmental testing before a sale could be completed, according to Brendan Schain, legal director for the environmental quality division at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said. The regulations pertained to properties even where there was not a known discharge or spill, Schain said. The changes, which will go into effect in 2026, were approved by the General Assembly's legislative regulation review committee and rely on investigation performed by property owners or prospective buyers and lenders to determine whether pollution is present and needs a cleanup. 'We know that buyers don't want to buy polluted properties with unknown liabilities,' Schain said. 'We know that lenders and others make people look for pollution, right? It relies on the investigation that we know is already being done – the market-driven investigation.' 'And instead of requiring an investigation, it starts from there,' Schain said. 'So, if you discover a release, you have to tell us about it, in certain circumstances, and clean it up to the state's cleanup standard.' Since the 1980s, 5,000 properties in the state have entered the Transfer Act program, but less than half have been remediated, according to the state. The regulation changes bring Connecticut in line with 48 other states. Economists at the state Department of Economic and Community Development estimate that the new systems will boost the state's economy. Over the next five years, the change could create 2,100 new construction jobs, $3.78 billion in new economic growth, as measured by gross domestic product and $115 million in new revenue to the state. 'This is a gamechanger for Connecticut,' Gov. Ned Lamont said, in a statement. 'This new system is truly a win-win, resulting in faster environmental clean-ups and unlocking countless blighted properties that will go from being community hazards to being community assets.' DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes echoed those sentiments: 'I look forward to implementing this modern cleanup program and bring valuable properties back into productive reuse.' Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@
