A: I currently live in Managua, Nicaragua, and was recently hired by Save the Children as the Nicaragua country program’s Proposal Development – Grants Coordinator. I’m thrilled to do what I love for an organization doing critical work to make positive changes in the lives of children and youth in Nicaragua and throughout the world.

 

After my experience volunteering with AMIGOS, the bug to return to Latin America was something I was never quite able to shake, which led me to choose Latin American Studies and Political Science as my major in college and to study abroad in Nicaragua for a semester. After graduating, I moved to Chicago for three years where I worked first as an Americorps VISTA volunteer and later as a legal representative with the National Immigrant Justice Center, and then decided to move to Nicaragua, both to reconnect with the country and to settle down permanently. Once in Nicaragua I stumbled upon a career path in fundraising and non-profit communications and marketing, and was actually offered my first job here by a fellow AMIGOS alum!

 

Q: What are you proud to have accomplished or to be currently working on?

A: I am humbled to be able to contribute to the change that I wish to see in the world through my work in resource development. I am proud to have had the tremendous good fortune to learn so much and work with incredibly committed and empowered people both in the U.S. and Latin America.

 

Q: How has AMIGOS affected your life, or enabled you get to where you are today?

A: In my case, the question is more, “How has AMIGOS not affected my life?”  Whenever anyone asks me how I ended up living in Nicaragua, or how it is that I speak Spanish so well, my story always begins with the first summer that I volunteered with AMIGOS in 1996. As if in a domino effect, that summer led to another summer with Amigos, and another, which influenced my direction of study and career choices, and ultimately my decision to move to Nicaragua and make a life here.

 

Beyond the choices that AMIGOS inspired in my life, I believe that my experience with AMIGOS profoundly impacted the person that I am, in immeasurable ways. I find that the way that I respond to the world around me is indelibly marked by the months that I spent living and working with communities in Ecuador, Brazil and the Dominican Republic, and I look back on those moments with fondness and gratitude, knowing that I would be a very different person were it not for these opportunities to learn and see the world in such a very different way.