June 19, 2017: Communication #5
Welcome to the fifth installment of our ULF communication. I am so excited to meet with you all this Wednesday! Amazing.
This week’s communication includes a pre-reading on career development, invitations to an opening Dinner and a calendar for the first week. As always, please reach out if you need anything not covered here!
Content: Career Development
In addition to the work with your partner organization and our elected official, we also build out a robust programmatic experience for our fellows because we want to make sure you leave at the end of the summer feeling like you’ve had exposure to a wide variety of people, experience and ideas! Some of these events will require you to break out of your comfort zone and network. Networking can be an intimidating thing for people, particularly those who don’t have as much experience in professional spaces. However, we’re here to tell you that networking doesn’t have to be intimidating or something to dread, and in fact your network and commitment to networking can be a force for good for yourself and others. We’ll lead a session on this in the future, but in the meantime, check out this article about “rethinking networking”.
A few questions to consider while reading:
How - if at all - does this change your perspective of networking?
Can you think of people in your network who you would consider “super connectors”?
When have you successfully ‘networked’ by answering the question “how can I help you?” during a meeting or at an event? How was that different than the more transactional interpretation we have of networking?
Logistics: Adding the ULF Calendar + Week One details
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to check out the ULF calendar on our regional site. However, if you haven’t please check it out here. It is a working calendar, so it may change slightly from week to week.
Once you check out this calendar, you’ll have all the info you need for week 1. A few things to note:
Day 1: Opening Day of ULF - you’ll be with our ULF team all day on Wednesday. We’re meeting at Nashville Classical Charter School at 9:30am. If you have any trouble, please call me at 919-475-5148. Please plan on parking on the street as our partner organizaiton is redoing their parking lot.
Day 2: Opening Dinner - We’re excited to host you for an opening dinner (fellows only, no guests please) at Firefly Grill at 8:00pm on Thursday evening.
Day 2: Start at your partner orgs in the morning, and meet me after at Nashville Classical at 1:00pm for afternoon programming.
As always, let me know if you have questions!
June 11, 2017: Communication # 4
Welcome to the fourth installment of our ULF communication. This week, we’re excited to highlight the work of Project Renaissance and provide some information about what to expect when communicating with partner organizations. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Content: Policy Projects
With the summer rapidly approaching, we’re really excited to update you on the status of the 2017 policy projects. Katie met with our elected official, Mary Pierce, and they’ve identified the policy projects you’ll work on this summer. Katie will share any pre-readings and additional information surrounding policy projects.
Once you arrive here on site, we’ll present an overview of these projects answer questions and then have a process for determining the policy teams and which projects you will work on.
Culture: Highlighting a Partner Organization
As we get closer to the summer, we hope you’re getting excited for the incredible work you’ll be doing with Mary Pierce. Equally as important to your policy work is the opportunity to spend half your time working alongside a local organization that is doing impactful work in our community. You’ll get the chance to learn about and hear from many of our partner organizations, but today, I want to highlight one entity we’re thrilled to be working with:
Project Renaissance
Mission
Project Renaissance works to provide all Nashville children with the high-quality education they deserve.
Vision
By empowering the community, advocating for supportive policy, recruiting effective educators, and growing great schools, Project Renaissance is dedicated to renewing our education landscape.
Logistics:
Communicating with Partner Orgs:
If you haven’t already heard from potential partner organizations about interviewing, or have heard you were not hired for your first partner organization, expect to hear from more partner organizations soon!
While we know you’re all professionals (that’s why we hired you!) we just want to highlight a few reminders:
1. Please be hyper responsive. The partner organizations are the hiring managers (and contribute to your stipend) so please be sure to respond in a timeline fashion (within 24 hours).
2. Accept all interviews. Even if you aren’t sure about the fit – or have another interview – we encourage you to accept all interviews to learn about the organization.
3. If you’re offered a job, respond in 24 hours. You need to let partner organizations know within 24 hours if you’re accepting the job so that they can also make hiring decisions with others. You’re welcome to finish up other interviews (if possible) and then please respond to the offer.
As a reminder, if you decline a job, you are still able to apply for other jobs but we do not guarantee you a position with a paid stipend. We work hard to ensure we have enough partner organizations without over-promising to organizations we can’t match with. For that reason, it strains our relationships and planning when fellows don’t accept roles. Ultimately, it’s up to you, but we won’t be able to guarantee you a stipend if you turn down a role.
4. Over Communicate. Offered a job? Let us know! Then we can make sure we don’t send your name along to other organizations and we reach out to finalize details with your partner org. When in doubt, let us know!
Action Item: We Want to Pay You!
To ensure we get you your money, we need your W9 by June 16, 2017. While we do not need a signature on your W9, we do need it to be completely filled out (so don’t accidentally send us a blank W9 please!). Please put a permanent address on this W9, as it is the same address we will send tax paperwork to you in January of 2018. You can access an editable/downloadable W9 here.
We cannot pay our fellows until we have received all W9s from all fellows. We anticipate paying fellows between July 1st - July 15th, 2017 though we cannot guarantee payment to all fellows until the end of the fellowship.
May 25, 2017: Communication # 3
ULF Weekly Communication #3:
Welcome to the third installment of our ULF communication. This week, we’re excited to share some pre-work on individual development, highlight one of our amazing alumni, and share with you a “day in the life” and “week in the life” to help shape your understanding of the weeks ahead. Read on for all of this information. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have questions. Don’t forget to continue to be responsive to partner organizations as they reach out (and contact me immediately if you’re offered a position) and to secure your housing for the summer. For details on both of these action items, see the last two communications I shared.
Content: Individual Development
Finding the change you seek is the cornerstone of ULF. Of course you’re going to get experience with a local organization, and you’ll definitely build your policy/organizing experience, but most importantly, we hope you leave our fellowship with clarity not about what you want to do next, but about the change that you seek. Only by having a deeper understanding of what the change is that you hope to make will you start to build a clear path forward.
Part of finding your own change is being able to identify what experiences in your life have been most formative, and what that means for your future. Being able to articulate this - through your story of self - is an important step. We’ll be working on telling the story of self this summer, but to get you thinking about, watch the first four minutes of Barack Obama’s address to the DNC in July, 2004 for one of the best examples of telling one’s own story.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWy4nt87PaJ0
While watching this video, consider the following questions:
1. How does then Sen. Obama tell a concise story that allows people understand him and relate to him though they’ve never met him before?
2. How does he make his story part of a bigger (in this case, American) story?
3. What parts/experiences of your life have been most formative for you?
Culture: ULF Alumni
If we haven’t told you already, we have an incredibly talented group of alumni across the country. From starting nonprofits to working for the department of Education, clerking for the Court of Appeals and holding elected office, our alumni are some of the most influential young leaders in the fields of education, law, policy, politics, advocacy, organizing and nonprofit leadership. You’ll get the chance to meet more of our alumni throughout the summer, but until then, we want to highlight one of our alumni from the Indianapolis region: Sarah Ofosu-Ameyaw
Sarah was most recently a public policy fellow with the Zoom Foundation, working in the office of economic and community development in Milford, Connecticut. For Sarah, a typical day usually involves a meeting with the Director of the Economic and Community Development. In these meetings, she briefs her manager on Economic and Community Policy issues that she is working on or issues that are coming up in the pipeline, and then they strategize on some next steps. She often conducts research in regards to the most pertinent policy matters that needs to be addressed, and then she’ll meet with various stakeholders to hear their or to gain more of an understanding.
> Read more about Sarah’s background and what’s next for her here.
Logistics: A Day in the Life, A Week in the Life
Curious about what your fellowship experience will look like? Check out this example calendar below for a sample week. We know that every week won’t look like this, but here’s a good sense of what you can expect on one of our busier weeks! Please let me know if you have questions about this. Once our calendar is live you can find it here.
May 15, 2017: Communication # 2
ULF Weekly Communication #2:
Hello! Welcome to the second installment of our ULF communication. This week, I’m excited to share a pre-reading on team development, help you get to know each other (and our team!) through short bios, and let you know about a kick off phone call I’m hosting to answer your many questions. Read on for all of this information. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have questions nile@urbanleadersfellowship.org and (845) 893-6138.
Content: Team Development Pre-Reading – Why Diverse Teams are Smarter
Note: if your Spring is busy, you don’t need to read these now; however, all of these pre-readings are resources you’ll need to be familiar with during the fellowship so we suggest digging in now to get ahead and get a sense for what to expect.
Team development is one of our four pillars of the fellowship, and something we value incredibly highly. Being a part of, and eventually building and maintain high performing, diverse teams is what sets apart organizations that are good from those that are great. Additionally, it can be the critical factor to job satisfaction and result in better outcomes and impact. For that reason, we strive to ensure all our teams are high performing and hope you’ll take this summer experience forward into your future leadership roles. This article, “Why Diverse Teams are Smarter” is a text that underpins much of our organization’s approach to team development. We firmly believe that there is value in diversity, and also that “nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter.” For that reason, we ensure that all groups we bring together - whether full time hires, summer fellowships or advisory groups - represent many different viewpoints.
As you read this article, we ask you to consider the following questions:
1. When have you seen the benefits of diverse teams? Does it match with the research outlined in the article?
2. Can you think of an example where you/a team would have come to a better perspective or solution if you had had the representation of a specific viewpoint(s)?
3. How does this make you think differently about your current team, your summer work, or future job prospects?
Culture: Meet your team!
Speaking of amazing, high performing teams… it’s time to meet your team for the Summer! Take a few minutes to check out the bios of our Staff and Fellows so you get to know our team. Consider sending a “hello” or “welcome” email to the group on our newly created listserv.
ULF family (national) - connects you to all of the fellows from around the nation from the beginning of time (< request to join & we’ll approve you!)
Logistics: Kick Off Phone Call
Based on the e-mails coming in, we know you have a lot of questions! For that reason, I will be hosting a kick off phone call on Thursday, May 18 at 6:30 pm EST/5:30 pm CST to answer your questions and proactively share some information on what to expect with partner organizations, policy projects and more. Even if you don’t have any questions yourself, you may find it helpful to listen to the questions of others.
Phone: 646-558-8656,8803203639#
Action Items:
Housing and Follow-up
Many of you have begun the search for housing, but for those who haven’t, this is a gentle reminder that – while we’re here to help – it’s up to you to secure housing for the summer! Please utilize this housing exchange as well as craigslist, AirBnb & other connections. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
Also, you will start to hear from partner orgs next week. Please be sure to be responsive. If you haven’t sent in your bio/resume/picture, please send that along asap!
May 5, 2017: Communication # 1
ULF Weekly Communication 1: Week of 5/1/17
Welcome to your ULF Nashville website & the first installment of our weekly communication. In each communication, we’ll cover: Content [info you’ll need to read/know for your fellowship experience], Culture [getting to know each other and your city], and Logistics [the important information to support your transition to ULF]. The expectation is that you read through the communication posted to the site, and follow up with me, your regional director, with any questions. You can reach me at nile@urbanleadersfellowship.org and (845) 893-6138. Additionally, we’ll always call out specific action items if there are any things we need you to do to ensure a smooth transition. I can’t wait to see you in just a handful of weeks!
PS - take a minute to click around our regional website a bit. We’ll use it all summer, and it’ll have things like: bios, resources, our fellowship calendar, communications and more. Please bookmark the site so you can find it easily.
Content: Welcome to Nashville!
I can’t wait to welcome you to Nashville in a few short weeks. The summer is one of the best times here, and I have no doubt you’ll fall in love with Nashville if you don’t already know and love it! To help introduce you to the city, I’ve included information about Musician’s Corner below. Enjoy and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions!
Culture: E-mail Listserv
To help us get to know each other better, and to make communication easier, I’ve set up a google e-mail listserv. If you haven’t already, you should be receiving an invitation to join. Please accept as we’ll utilize the listserv to plan everything from finding roommates/housing (if needed) to planning excursions and sharing relevant information. Also, this forum is yours - so please feel free to utilize it to get to know each other, ask questions and find resources as you’d like!.
Logistics: Housing exchange, & Partner Org Hiring Process
Housing Exchange: In order to help facilitate a transition to Nashville for those of you currently living out of town, ULF has set up a “housing exchange” with local partners to help you identify and secure low-cost housing. It should be noted that you are ultimately responsible for securing your own housing, so we suggest that you also utilize personal connections (if applicable), craigslist/AirBnB and any other resources at your disposal. If you are interested in using the housing exchange, you can find it here. In this exchange, friends and partners of ULF have listed their apartments / rooms available for rent during the summer. It’s first-come-first-served, so please don’t delay in reaching out to the people who have listed rooms.
Partner Org Hiring Process: I have already confirmed the majority of our partner organizations for the summer, where you’ll spend your mornings working on mission-critical projects. Soon, you will start to hear from partner organizations who are interested in hiring you. In order to facilitate a smooth process, I’ll added some information here:
1. Partner Organizations make decisions (Not ULF): Because partner organizations are the ones who design the project, and pay your salary, they are the ones who make the final hiring decision. While I will work with them to ensure that they are connected with fellows who are a good match for what skills and experiences they need, I do not directly place any fellows.
2. Partner Organizations will receive resumes, and determine who they would like to interview. Some POs may just want to offer you a position, while others may request one or more interviews before making an offer. Please accept all interviews within 24 hours of being contacted.
3. If you are offered a position by a PO and you’re excited about it, please respond within 24 hours of the offer being made, and accept it! If you are offered a position and you’re concerned about the fit, please reach out to me immediately before declining an offer. If you choose to decline an offer, ULF cannot guarantee that you will get another paid offer from a partner organizations, so we do not recommend that you do so. If you choose to decline, we will continue to support you in getting hired, but you may not be eligible for a paid position, so please keep that in mind.
4. Finally, please operate with a sense of urgency and respect with these partners. Many of them have worked closely with ULF & with Mary Pierce for many years, so please remember you’re representing our organization in your interactions here. Please refrain from reaching out to partner organizations directly; they have access to all resumes and will reach out if they are interested in speaking with you.
Our goal is to have all fellows hired by June 1st; however, it’s common to have fellows hired closer to the start of the fellowship.
Action Items: Send us your bio, headshot & updated resume, complete your partner org skills survey [ By: May 9].
In order to get to know each other (and facilitate hiring with partner organizations), I need your short bio, your headshot (it doesn’t have to be by a professional photographer, but please ensure you’re comfortable with external and internal partners seeing it) and an updated resume by May 9th, 2017. If you’d like to see an example of a bio, please click here.
In addition to your bio, headshot & resume, we also need you to take 5-10 minutes between now & May 9th to complete this partner org survey. I’ll share your answers with partner organizations to help them make informed hiring decisions.