Shared Effort

Mandy Mazur ’08, current fellow at Lumity in Chicago, reflects on the early days of her experience as a Project 55 Fellow:

“Lumity is a nonprofit organization that helps hundreds of other nonprofits in the Chicago area operate more efficiently and deepen their community impact through a variety of training and consulting services in the areas of information technology and finance. While my background as a comparative literature major did not directly equip me with the skills and knowledge for my fellowship (you may wonder, how does a command of Dostoevsky’s work relate to the setup of an online donation tool?), I have certainly applied the creativity and critical thinking skills those years of poetry-reading and paper-writing have honed. Plus, navigating entirely new and unfamiliar territory is incredibly rewarding—it forces you to adapt and reinvent your current capacities.”

Mandy has embraced the new skills she is learning in her position at Lumity, “As the Program Associate in External Affairs, I have worked on marketing-related projects, in addition to IT and website work. I have helped set up an online donation tool to enable effortless giving from our donors and facilitated the purchase and configuration of a donor database that is integrated with an email campaigning tool. I also manage relations with various partner organizations and gather client and consultant information to highlight success stories.”

Mandy also reflects on the support she has received through Project 55’s Fellowship Programs:

“The engaged alumni community has made my transition into this new world incredibly smooth. I have already received buckets of advice and encouragement from mentors, through email exchanges, lunch dates and seminars. Invaluable from the start, I cannot wait to see where this yearlong fellowship takes me next!”