Management 484 Internship Be A Leader Foundation

Taking Steps Towards A College Success

Internship Report
December 19th 2012 Yasmin Tapia

Table of Contents
Founders Background....................................................2 Nature of the Company ...................................................4 Exhibit 1-1 Be A Leader Foundation Structure ..............6 Be A Leader Foundation Programs ................................6 What I did at BALF ........................................................8 Knowledge Gained .......................................................11

Founders Background
Over the past five months I have had the privilege to work with one of the most impactful non-profits in the Phoenix community the Be A Leader Foundation. The organization was founded by Gary Trujillo and Melissa Trujillo in 2002. The Trujillos created the Be A Leader Foundation with the intention of aiding and educating inner-city students in the Phoenix Metro on the importance of a college education, and how to go about attaining a college degree. Its an issue thats close to the heart for the Trujillo family, as Gary was born and raised in South Phoenix, and witnessed firsthand the disadvantages and obstacles inner city students faced in preparation for a college education. Gary grew up in a Mexican-American household with both parents along with his three older siblings. As a young child, his father encouraged him to play baseball and he excelled, starting off by playing in pickup games around his neighborhood to later being selected to join some of Phoenixs most prestigious youth traveling squads. Being an exemplary baseball player allowed Gary the opportunity to become acquainted with his educators on a stronger basis, and one of these educators is Pete Garcia. Gary was only twelve years old when Pete Garcia became Garys mentor, but Pete encouraged Gary to maintain high marks academically while also pushing him to excel outside of the classroom. Fortunately, Mr.Garcias advice and persistence paid off, and at the end of Garys eight grade year, the esteemed St. Marys Catholic High School in Phoenix, AZ offered Gary a chance to attend on a baseball scholarship. St. Marys, was known as the prep powerhouse of the times, regarded not only for its academic rigor, but its academic excellence as well. Unfortunately, the opportunity to attend a white-collar school such as St. Marys was seen as a prime opportunity by Garys entire support network. Garys parents immediately voiced their opposition, as they were wary of the effect of interacting daily with students of higher financial status would have on their son. Not

wanting to be the source of derision in his family, Gary planned on rejecting the scholarship until Mr. Garcia intervened and convinced them to allow Gary to attend Saint Marys Catholic High School. Peter not only stressed the importance of the opportunity to play baseball, but he also highlighted the value of the top-flight education Gary was going to receive. During his time at St. Marys, Gary was able to continue exceeding in baseball and in his academics with the help of Mr. Garcia. When Gary was a senior, he visited his counselor for assistance in applying to college. The counselor without hesitation mentioned to him that he should consider attending technical school instead to become an auto mechanic. Gary left the dazed and confused, and called Mr. Garcia soon after. Within minutes, Mr. Garcia was at the counselors office, ready to battle. I remember Peter getting off his car and asking me where is she? He then told me to wait in the lobby. The counselors office door then closed and all I could hear was loud shouts from Peter Gary stated. Soon after the incident, Mr. Garcia called Garys parents requesting permission to enroll Gary at Arizona State University. Garys parents immediately agreed with the notion, and Peter and Gary began the enrollment process for college. Gary was recruited by the Mens Baseball team and played his first year at the university, but his baseball career came to an end when he was cut during his sophomore year. Although he was no longer involved with sports, Gary would become heavily involved on campus, and would meet his second mentor, Dr. Loui Olivas, During his time at Arizona State University, Gary was able to become a well-rounded student, serving in organizations such as Beta Alpha Psi, Delta Sigma Pi, Adelante, and Mecha. He also served as the Student Class Senator in the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and was President of the Hispanic Business Students Association. Through the Hispanic Business Students Association he was able to meet the third individual who truly impacted
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Garys life; former dean of the W. P. Carey School of Business, Mr. William Bill Seidman. Gary was close to graduating and had decided to take a job offer for an accounting firm, but Mr. Seidman had mentored and encouraged him to forgo a traditional accounting firm to instead become an investment banker on Wall Street; and then go on to receive an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Gary graduated from Arizona State University with an Accounting degree and immediately began working as an Investment Banker on Wall Street with Salomon Brothers. After his sixth year in Investment Banking, Mr. Seidman flew to meet up with Gary in San Francisco, with the intention of making Gary apply to HBS. Gary opposed the notion, mentioning to Mr. Seidman that he believed that he was not a good candidate for Harvard and that life was too great for him to go back to school. Nevertheless, Mr. Seidman began hand writing Garys recommendation letter for admission to Harvard Business School. Upon obtaining his MBA, Gary returned to Phoenix and began his own venture capital firm, where specialized in backing minority-own businesses. Gary then met his wife Mellissa, and then decided to begin the Be A Leader Foundation in 2002.

Nature of the Company

The foundation has been supporting underprivileged youth for 18 years through financial assistance, personal mentoring and guidance. It was not until 2002 however, when Be A Leader Foundation (BALF) became a Phoenix, Arizona based nonprofit, 501(c) (3) tax exempt organization. BALFs mission is to increase the number of college going students by empowering them to become college bound, focus and prepared through leadership training and mentoring. The organization focus in building trust and confidence in relationships, developing the self-confidence needed to both lead and follow, and formulating and implementing ethical and valued based decisions.

The foundation has seven different programs where they are able to help students as young as elementary all the way to college graduates. Although all program focus on the same purpose of Achieving College Success, the programs are designed around each students grade level. Each program has specific structure and assigned coordinator and volunteers. The first program ever established was towards 7th grade students. Gary Trujillo was familiar with Roosevelt School District located in south Phoenix, as he attended their schools as a young child. The connection and support from the community was immediate. The program began expanding when Be A Leader Foundation partnered with the Roosevelt School District with the purpose of reaching out directly to students. Today, Be A Leader is no longer just serving one school district but all ten districts in the Phoenix metro area. The staff at Be A Leader is composed of a total of six employees and the founders. Each person is assigned to a specific program to facilitate. The coordinators are able to receive assistance from their co-workers on any task and they also have a strong support by the committed volunteers that the organization has. The environment in the office is very cohesive due to the amount of programs the staff needs prepare for over 1,000 students from all over the valley. At the office, everyone is able to see what their coworkers are doing at the office since the office is small and employees desks are close together. During my time at the office I was assigned to sit next to the VP of College Going Initiative Programs, Karla A. Robles. She oversees every program coordinator and set goals for the rest of the employees. In the exhibit 1-1 below demonstrates the company structure. Be A Leader is very unique and has been able to maintain successful by the amount of work the employees do. As demonstrated in the chart Be A Leaders employees are responsible for providing services for more than 40 students per

individual. While other organizations have over 15 employees to manage 50 students, BALF staff is able to serve more than 1,000 students and run 7 different programs.

Exhibit 1-1

Be A Leader Foundation Structure

Founders Gary and Melissa Trujillo Board Of Directors VP of College Going Initiative Programs

Yasmin BALF Interm Middle School Cordinator V-Club & YLC'S Roosovelt Rosovelt School School District Elementary Teachers

High School Cordinator BLIH

Elementery Cordinator BLIE Roosovelt Rosovelt School Distric Elementery Teachers

Mentor Cordinator

21 High School Teachers (Club Sponsors) 300 High School Students

Volunteers

65 Elementary Students

60 Middle School Students 300 Students attend the YLC Conference

Be A Leader Foundation Programs

Be a Leader Institute (BLIE) is a program that is aimed at creating a positive learning environment and nurturing the community through its college going curriculum and self-esteem development. The program meets once a month at the Roosevelt School District in Phoenix.
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Along with students meeting once a month, the parents also join the program once every two months. Each month the program has a specific topic to cover such as community service, cultural awareness, enrolling for AP/Honors classes, calculating GPA, and learning about their interests, along with their strengths and weaknesses. The Valedictorian Club (V-Club) is a program for 8th graders that provides each student encouragement to use high school as a platform to develop the leadership and academic skills necessary to be prepare for college. The V-Club is very unique because it allows each student in the program to be partnered with a mentor. The mentors are either ASU student volunteers or community volunteers and their role is to be the primary support to the 8th grade students in the program. The mentors attend each program date along with their mentees (8th grade students) during the time of the workshop the mentors serve as the guide to the students in any assigned activity. Similar to the 7th grade program, the parents are also invited to attend parent meeting once every two months. This program is one of the most important due to the dedication it takes to prepared. The Youth Leadership Conferences (YLCS) are hosted once a year. The conferences are an entire day for 8th grade students who do not belong to the Phoenix school district and are not part of any Be A Leader Program. Since the 7th and 8th grade programs are limited to students who are part of the Roosevelt School District, the YLCs act as the perfect way to reach any student in the valley and introduced them to the Be A Leader Foundation and invite them to join a program once they are in High School. Be A Leader Institute High School (BLIH) meets once a month inviting all high school students from all over the valley to join the program. In this program all of BALFs staff attends as it is the largest program BALF has to offer, serving over 150 high school students at once. With the help of ASU students as volunteers and mentors the program allows students to begin
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their preparation to college as early as 9th grade. The Be A Leader Clubs is the program that allows students to stay connected within their own High School. The clubs are established on High School campuses aimed at allow student to develop leadership skills as these clubs are run by the students alone. Be A Leader Senior Boot Camp is one of the most rigid programs at Be A Leader. This program is the only program that meets before the school year beginning due to the extensive curriculum that the students are exposed. The program is only for uprising seniors in high school they meet once a week over the summer and with the help of mentors the students are encourage to write their personal statements, apply to college and submit scholarship applications.

What I did at BALF

My role at BALF throughout my internship was dynamic, fast-paced, and never lacking adventure or chaos! Although I was never assigned a formal role, as the only intern in the office, I was expected to contribute whenever necessary, and that happened to be all of time. During my time in the office, my main role was to prepare for the workshops and conference put on for the BALF students. The preparation for these conferences was often more work than I expected, as it involved much due diligence into the actual activities expected to be performed throughout the day. For example, during BALFs first student workshop for their high school scholars, I was charged with planning out the activities and ice breakers that would go on throughout the event, as well as obtaining a speaker (a well-known figure in the community) to come in and speak of their life experiences to provide additional inspiration for their students. To say the least, I was shocked at how much work planning out activities and icebreakers could really be. I had to make a scheduled agenda with dates and times organized and laid out, and then issue the instruction for the activities to all the volunteer mentors and staff beforehand so they would be informed before

the high school students would arrive. In addition, I also charged with speaking with many of the students parents concerning the activities BALF would be holding over the year and the importance of the continued attendance for children in order for them to obtain the maximum benefit from BALF. There was much difficulty in this task, as most of the students in BALF are the children of Hispanic immigrants and often live in impoverished areas. Unfortunately, most of the childrens parents arent the most supportive concerning their children attaining a higher level of education, and the cultural biases against their children leaving the family are quite strong (In Hispanic culture the family unit is considered the crux of all activity). Fortunately, I myself had had to go through many of the experiences the BALF students go through, so when talking to parents, I tend to stress that in America, education is great equalizer between the rich and poor, and that allowing their children will go to university will allow for their families to climb the social ladder at alarming rate. When I wasnt coordinating activities and communicating with parents, I was busy meeting with teachers in meetings with potential sponsors of the Be A Leader Foundation. BALF is currently on a campaign to expand the club to high schools all over the valley, but this has always proved to be a problem logistically, particularly when traveling to the east valley to recruit future BALF scholars. Many times this semester we would find students from cities such as Chandler, Gilbert, and even Apache Junction at our BALF events. Unfortunately, when it came to opening BALF clubs at their high schools, it would be prove to quite difficult. The most interesting aspect about meeting teachers would be their interest in the BALF programs itself, and their astonishment at the success rate of the students BALF matriculated to universities nationwide. I spent many a meeting explaining our founders story and the complex structure BALF employs in preparing our student for success at the university level. I suppose the most
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surreal aspect of telling the story was the fact that I was a part of the BALF legacy of continuously preparing students for success. I always could smile knowing that the work I was doing was actually providing society with a positive impact, which I think is truly the most one can ask for. Most days in the office, I was charged with calling BALF students to check in on their progress academically and to register new BALF members for future events and workshops. This work was the most tenuous, as many of the kids I would call were living under tough circumstances at home, and the phone calls I would place would only make that fact more obvious. Often times I would call various students houses to hear their parents instructing me to not call again or telling me that they were unaware that their child was even at BALF event and needed a ride. This also was the most disheartening aspect of my internship this semester, knowing that some parents either did not have the time to care about their childrens whereabouts, or they flat just didnt care at all. To know that for the limited time you have, youre providing a positive a fun outlet for many of the children who dont have an outlet at home, its a responsibility that I never took lightly and always tried to uphold and remind myself of. Every once in a while, I would be charged with a project involving a marquee BALF event. This semester, that event would prove to be organizing volunteers for the BALF Walk-athon and College Workshop. At first, the task proved to be near impossible, as the volunteers that I had counted on to sign up never did. This task taught me a lot concerning persistence and how to be persuasive and really selling myself and what I and BALF had to offer. Every day I would place about 20 30 calls to differing people every day, only to end up as empty handed as I did before. It got so bad the Gary himself ccs himself on an e-mail sent to all of the BALF staff
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demanding why we hadnt obtained any volunteers. Eventually, after an inspired night of coldcalling every fraternity and organization ASU has to offer, I was able to round up 100 volunteers, and the BALF Walk-a-thon and College Workshop ended up to be a massive success. One of the great joys I had during my internship was the office atmosphere. It was great to know that I would go into an office that loose and welcoming, and deprived off the stress and politics that usually pervaded the floors of Corporate America

Knowledge Gained
Being part of the Be A Leader foundation for the last five months, has allowed me to gain much knowledge in which I know I will carry and utilize thought out my career. At the beginning of my internship, I understood the foundation believes, values and motives, as I had been a mentor and active volunteer before I was hired. However, being a volunteer did not give me the entire understanding of what the foundation entails. My passions for non-profits have always pushed me to stay active in my community, and dedicate my time as non-profits have helped me pursue many of my goals such as attending college. After my first semester in the Management Degree I decided in pursuing a career in the non-profit industry. Working at BALF was the best way for me to understand what the industry truly is like. I had been helped by several non-profits but to work on the other side allowed me to understand the management and decision making that the foundation does on a daily bases. Applying knowledge I learned in the classroom, while working at BALF I was able to understand what things a non-profit needs to succeed. I started to realize that non-profits that are successful must have dedicated staff who are willing to not only do work that they are compensated for, but also go above and beyond by completing work that they are sometimes not reimbursed for. In addition, non-profit must be centrally organized and everyones roles must be
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clearly defined in order for business to continue as usual. Everyones productivity would increase when they were charged with a specific task or project to do where their names would be held accountable, rather than when Karla issued a task in general, I saw that rarely ever would her assigned tasks get completed in the time period she allotted for them, which often would cause delays for other BALF projects she planned to start. I also learned much about leadership, and the different styles of leadership one must keep in their arsenal at al l times. It is very important for the leader to always have control of the group that they are leading. Without such control, the group becomes unresponsive, and they lose respect for their task at hand. With that control however, a leader must learn to tailor their leadership style to the individuals that they come in contact with on a daily basis. More people expect equal treatment in the workplace regardless of rank or position, and the BALF was a great example of such. Everyone worked out of the same office, and all of our desktops were next to each other, so everyone feels accessible to everyone. That being said, the members of the BALF have different personalities, so talking to every one of them requires a level of act and high anticipatory awareness. I often would Karla handling different workers in differing manners, and I at first questioned her management style; thinking that she was a yes man and she only cared for here employees and employers approval, rather than generating any results that would reflect the work ethic of the Be A Leader Foundation as a whole. I later came to find out that Karla was caring about the BALF, and that to do, appeasing to her employees helped create the close knit, family-like atmosphere in the office that I have grown to love dearly. Ultimately, I also learned multiple life lessons just from working with many of the BALF student that would come to our events and workshops. To be able to work with teenagers who are from environments where they lack many resources and the support necessary to achieve

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their dreams; is truly an honor. Some of students would ride the city bus and light rail for 40 minutes to an hour just to get to our events. Others would attend community college classes after our events, or volunteer with other organizations. To see such children with the odds stacked against them, continue to push on and battle is truly inspiring and gave me the motivation to continue with my work. It also made me aware of the fact that most barriers that prevent people from fulfilling their dreams are mental, rather than physical or tangible

Applying Academics Learned in the Workplace

During my time at Arizona State University, most of my management classes consisted of group projects, midterm and final exams, and participation grades based on my individual contribution to the classroom dialogue. All three aspects of the classes were somewhat helpful in communicating many terms of principle of management, but the application of all aspects in the real world was not as fluid. What did help in transitioning into my internship was the group projects component. Learning how to work, deal with, and manage people with differing personalities and beliefs is the most important thing in todays workplace. Its often the difference between obtaining a promotion and losing ones job. Working at BALF, many of the skills and experiences I had from working in groups during school transitioned into my new role. At a non-profit, people often are stressed and deal with the excessive workloads they have differently. This can allow for one to have an angry outburst, or just lead someone into being in a testy mood. I was more than prepared for this as working in groups at ASU taught me how much excellent communication skills can come in handy. I was able to avoid confrontations with other BALF staff due to my knowing of when to say what, and how to say it.

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Another aspect of my classroom teachings that assisted me was the participation in classroom dialogues. Learning to how to contribute in a group setting with valuable input is a skill that cannot be underestimated. Over the course of my internship, many internal staff meetings would occur where every member was expected to contribute their ideas and goals for BALF. At first, it was a daunting experience for me as I never had been immersed in such an experience. Over time, it became progressively easier to participate and add value to the team discussions. I can honestly state that without the exposure to such forums provided me by my education, I would not have been able to contribute to the discussions held during my time at BALF. The social aspect of college is ultimately what prepared me for internship the most, rather than the

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