School Newspapers

Full Articles

2015

This summer, I had the profound honor to begin working at ServiceCorps, a nonprofit organization that empowers top college graduates passionate about social change to defer their start dates at leading corporations and instead serve in high-impact nonprofits for one year – all while their positions in the next year’s corporate class are securely held. Founded by Matt Ronen — an IDF veteran who faced live combat during the Second Intifada—ServiceCorps is setting out to inspire corporations, non-profit organizations and college students to think differently about the traditional career path and reinvent it for good. Matt came to HAFTR this week to speak to the seniors about his start-up organization, and offered students the opportunity to volunteer this summer or during the mandatory spring internships that HAFTR requires.

Matt is a great boss, an awesome friend, but an even better man. The year following his graduation from Colorado College, he joined the IDF and soon saw himself in live combat during the Second Intifada. After doing his service, he returned to the United States and pursued an MBA from Cornell University. In the final semester of his program, returning from a night out with friends, he stumbled into the middle of a brutal mugging, suffered severe injuries, and had a near-death experience. For the six tumultuous months of his recovery, Matt was unable to articulate speech and developed a tremendous appreciation for the men and women working in the nonprofit sector who had devoted their lives to helping people like him. Inspired and revitalized, Matt set out to solve three critical problems at once:

• For first-year college graduates: launch a career or make a social impact?
• For corporations: Gaining an edge in the inter-corporation competition to recruit top-college graduates.
• For nonprofits: Getting the manpower needed to sustain their operations and achieve their missions.

With this triangular model, the college graduates get to both give back to society and ensure their auspicious careers, corporations “sweeten the deal” for their recruited college graduates, and nonprofits gain the manpower that they so critically need. At ServiceCorps, we call this “One for One for All.” Service creates better leaders, and better leaders create a better world, for all.

As “Research Director” of the organization, I have had many of exciting tasks (e.g. gathering the Fortune 500 executives’ contact information), spectacular opportunities (e.g. sit-in on corporate meetings and travel to the Foundation Center in Battery Park, New York), and a ticket to meeting some of our country’s most influential business leaders (i.e. Michael Corbat, the CEO of CitiGroup).

So far, ServiceCorps already has partnered with two of this country’s most influential corporations, General Electric and CitiGroup, and has likewise done so with five fantastic, high-impact nonprofits (i.e. The Future Project, Move This World, Advancing Human Rights, Strength To Strength, and Y-Apply).

ServiceCorps is currently offering spring and summer internships to HAFTR High School Seniors. Application details will be released soon.

© Copyright 2016 The Tattler