Many students wonder the same thing. Many alumni have found answers that work for them. Nancy Paul, director of BU's Career Development Center, wanted to bring these students and alumni together. So she formed a cross-campus committee that included faculty, staff and students, and together, last winter, they produced Tap Your Passion, a week-long series of presentations, panel discussions and forums designed to enable students to "explore careers that make the world a better place."

Several of the alumni who returned to campus that week to share their stories and expertise with students participated in the panel discussion about working in public service or non-profit organizations, "Turning Passion to Action: Stories from Alumni." You'll read about several of them here, including Leslie Dunne '84, Pablo Tejada '92 and Linda Wurster Peer-Groves '88, MAT '91. You'll also read about other alumni who are helping to make a difference in the world.

Pablo Tejada '92, chief program officer at the Grand Street Settlement, a community service organization serving Manhattan's Lower East Side

Pablo Tejada '92: Opening doors to the future

As recently as 1998, if you were a high school student on Manhattan's Lower East Side and wanted to explore your options for the future, you were on your own. The area's five high schools -- each with an enrollment of 2,000 to 3,000 -- offered students no career or college guidance of any kind.

Pablo Tejada helped change all that.

Beginning with a $5,000 grant to fund a part-time staff position, Tejada hired Martin Caba '93 and started the program that became the Grand Street Settlement's College and Career Discovery Center. That first year they helped enroll 20 kids in college. Now, with a $400,000 budget and six full-time staff members who provide college and career counseling in the schools, the program helps 175 students enroll in college and another 250 find jobs. What's more, it builds kids' awareness about college and career options in the junior high and elementary schools and helps them to start setting goals right from the beginning.

"Our job is to really figure out the strengths and talents of young people," said Tejada. "We connect them with their interests."

Victor Rasuk, the actor who plays Victor Vargas in the movie Raising Victor Vargas (2002), is a case in point. The Grand Street Settlement helped Rasuk, a one-time high school dropout, enroll in a performing arts school. "He wanted to act," said Tejada. "Now he attends college, has a Coca-Cola commercial deal and also volunteers for our programs."

It's knowing what a difference his work makes in people's lives that keeps Pablo Tejada '92 coming to work and putting in 10 to 14 hours every day. "I'm very passionate about my job," he said. "Even though it may sound like a lot of hours, to me the days go by so fast. And there are always rewards."

Leslie Dunne at a meeting with village elders in Bondongo, Azire, 1987. Leslie with some village children.

Leslie Dunne '84: A Peace Corps perspective.

A Peace Corps volunteer from 1985 to 1987, Leslie Dunne worked in the Congo (then Zaire), in the small villages of Iboko and Bondongo. Living there gave her an important perspective on life, she said, and made her realize "we have so much in this country.

"I was the first non-African to live in Bondongo," Dunne said. "It was very rural: I lived in a mud house with a thatched roof, washed my clothes in the creek and cooked over a fire inside my hut. The people were great -- completely hospitable. I felt lucky to be a neighbor and a friend."

Dunne, who majored in linguistics at BU, was first assigned to be an English teacher. But as a former hospital volunteer and Harpur's Ferry dispatcher who'd taken many pre-med courses, she was soon assigned to training local health educators.

Dunne's experience in the Peace Corps instilled confidence and gave her administrative and programmatic skills she's used ever since. Upon returning home, she spent several years teaching English as a Second Language in New York and in Washington, D.C., where she is director of operations for Healthy Mothers/Healthy Babies (HMHB), a national non-profit group dedicated to improving the health and safety of mothers, babies and families through education and collaborative partnerships. Numerous state, county and city organizations that provide direct service to women and children rely on HMHB for up-to-date information. Keeping the information on HMHB's website current and relevant is a big part of Dunne's job, as is sending out e-mail alerts and coordinating conferences.

"I really like what I do and believe the resources we provide are valuable and useful to those who work directly with families," said Dunne. She also finds her job rewarding because it encourages creativity and innovation. "We have a lot of autonomy and freedom to follow through on new ideas -- but also have to find the funding to implement them," she added.

Volunteering has always played a big role in Dunne's life: She likes it because it's interesting, engaging and rewarding. And she recommends it as a valuable career tool that can provide an entree and contacts in a lot of different areas. Dunne has volunteered in hospitals, worked on housing projects and tutored homeless kids in Washington, D.C. These days, she's working to raise funds for humanitarian projects in Haiti, a country she has visited twice.

"Of everything I've done, I've gotten more out of it than I put in," said Dunne.

Brenda Hudson with a friend during her tour of duty as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zimbabwe

Brenda Hudson '93: Exchanging cultures.

When Brenda Hudson left her job as a social worker to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Zimbabwe from 1998 to 2000, she thought, "If I don't do this now, I never will."

Hudson got the travel bug when she spent a year abroad in Australia as an undergraduate at BU. She wanted to learn about different cultures, but not as a tourist. She wanted to contribute to any community she was to live in and learn from.

A co-captain of the then-new crew club while at BU, Hudson worked in sports development in Zimbabwe with local council members, teachers and others. "We set up a tennis court, and I taught some girls at the secondary school where I lived how to swim in an irrigation hole that was refilled every day," she said. "I taught baseball and soccer (including women's soccer, which was very, very new as a women's sport) and we entered country-wide competitions." She also taught computer skills -- Word, PowerPoint and Excel -- at the school.

Hudson loved the people of Zimbabwe. "They were amazing, sweet and so giving," she said. She also witnessed a lot of heartbreak there. One out of three people is infected with HIV. She had to leave the country before her tour of duty was up when hostilities broke out in June 2000. Because of the ongoing conflict, she knows that some of the physical structures she helped build didn't last. What she's most proud of are the intangible effects of her work there. "They learned something about what an American is," she said. "Out there on a dusty field with kids in bare feet, I got them to do something healthy and positive. The biggest impact for them was that somebody cared enough to leave their home to come and help them."

Afterwards, Hudson spent several months traveling to Egypt, Israel, India and South Africa. She returned home with a better understanding about the world, she said. "When you go to a completely different culture, you notice that we all share a lot of common human traits; we're more alike than we are different," she said.

It's an important lesson. "When we understand each other's cultures, there's a better opportunity for peace," Hudson said.

After her Peace Corps experience and subsequent travels, Hudson came back to New York City, where she is a sales operations manager of Totality.com, an information technology firm. There, she's developed the business skills that she plans to merge with her "social work heart" and her knowledge of other countries in a new venture: Sacred Link Distribution, a startup company that she learned about when she met the man who was to become her husband at a retreat at the Himalayan Institute. Sacred Link, which is being sponsored and fostered by the Himalayan Institute in its startup phase, will support artists and artisans from all over the world by buying directly from them and distributing their work to small retail stores in the United States.

Erica Spottswood '99: Wilderness vocation

Spottswood in the village of Niamgoulam, Togo, where she lived during her Peace Corps tour

"I applied for this position because I couldn't resist," said Erica Spottswood of her job managing an ecological monitoring program in Gabon, Africa. After a post-college experience with the Peace Corps in Togo, Spottswood decided to postpone graduate school to help the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) establish a station in Gabon's Langoué-Ivindo National Park where researchers may conduct long-term studies of animals and plants. She is also developing tourism programs in the park, which offers splendid opportunities to view elephants, gorillas and other wildlife.

Headquartered in a tent in a remote forest clearing, with electricity from solar-charged batteries, Spottswood is training people in botany, data collection and the other skills a diverse research program requires. She is also laying plans to erect a more permanent research facility, a major challenge at a building site that's 12 kilometers from any road.

Spottswood has been interested in nature and the outdoors for most of her life, and, she said, "it is difficult to care about these things without also being interested in conservation." At Binghamton, she majored in biology and environmental studies. She finds her job fulfilling because it allows her to do work she loves and "because it is what I think is important. I am very aware of the catastrophic impact human activities are having on the functioning of ecosystems even inside protected areas. Research needs to be done to understand these impacts. Conservation needs to play a key role along with research in order to minimize the impact."

The work of the WCS in Langoué-Ivindo and other national parks has helped preserve Gabon's wild forests at a crucial time in the country's history, Spottswood said. "I am only a small part of that, but I feel that together we are doing something really important."

Linda Wurster Peer-Groves '88, MAT '91: The right stuff

The right combination of enthusiasm, interest and knowledge, plus the ability to identify and fill a need, can open doors for you everywhere. That's what Linda Wurster Peer-Groves '88, MAT '91, who returned to the United States from Cambodia and India after living and working as an education consultant for 12 years, found out. "Being there and wanting to be there" were important factors in getting jobs abroad that she loved, but "volunteering was the number-one key," she noted.

Peer-Groves, who earned her BA in French and biology before going on for her master's in teaching and French literature, ended up living in Central and Southeast Asia after her marriage to a British international agriculture and irrigation consultant. "The first thing we did after getting married was move to Pakistan," she said. It wasn't an easy adjustment -- amenities were minimal and Peer-Groves missed the comforts of home. But she wanted to teach, so she volunteered and taught English at local high schools and colleges.

The couple's next home was in the Philippines. They lived for two and a half years in the mountains of northern Luzon, where Peer-Groves volunteered as a teacher at a local state college and university. Next they moved to Cambodia, which she described as "scary and wonderful. We lived in a small town that was somewhere between oblivion and Shangri-la." While there, Peer-Groves' education and volunteer work landed her a position with World Education that focused on cluster-school development. "It was a great experience," she said. "I had a wonderful translator, a woman who became my best friend as well as a mother."

Peer-Groves went on to work on education quality improvement projects with UNICEF and the World Bank, helping to support more than 400 schools in Takeo. A move to Orissa, India was next. There she became aware that the area's sea turtles were endangered, and succeeded in obtaining grant money to protect them with the use of reefball technology.

"Someone once told me, ‘If you put yourself in the lap of the gods, they tend to take care of you,' and I'd say it's true," said Peer-Groves. "Living overseas and getting to know other cultures has always been a dream of mine. The glossy brochure living I imagined did not include enduring extreme heat, monitoring painfully slow progress, navigating really bad roads, surviving a coup and two pregnancies, but I lived through these challenges. The actual reality has given me a whole new perspective on all aspects of life including money, childrearing, housework, environment, education and understanding people in general. Having an opportunity to work allowed me to meet many people and visit remote areas that I would have never dreamed of going to otherwise. People have often asked me, ‘Aren't you afraid, living in those far-flung places?' But I tell them no, because wherever you go there are friends waiting to meet you, usually with a bottle of Coke, and the connections we made with people and places have enriched our lives without measure."

Peer-Groves lives in West Simsbury, Conn., with her husband, Roland, and children, Emily, 6, and Chris, 3.

Beyond the job

Some alumni promote social justice by taking on volunteer roles that complement their paid professions. Tracy Caliendo-Schneck '97 is a vice president in the Equities Division in the New York office of Goldman Sachs. A member of her division's Women's Network, she works with her colleagues to organize community service events, and she has built relationships with several community organizations. One of these is the Women's Venture Fund (WVF), which helps urban women launch new businesses. Caliendo-Schneck organizes programs that bring female entrepreneurs to Goldman Sachs to receive advice from business professionals. "I've had CFAs [chartered financial analysts] teach a class on how to write financial statements," she said. "I've had professionals with a marketing background spend time with the entrepreneurs to hear how they are marketing and advertising their businesses." Some volunteers become mentors to individual business owners, whose ventures include a gas station, a hair salon, a service that helps students apply to college and a wide variety of others. "These women are amazing," Caliendo-Schneck said. "When you meet them and see the ambition in their eyes and the strong instincts they possess, you know they are going to succeed on both a personal and a professional level." An organizer since her days in the Alpha Zeta Delta sorority at Binghamton, Caliendo-Schneck said volunteering takes less time than people sometimes fear. "I think everyone should participate in something," she said, but added that it's important for volunteers to choose causes they enjoy: "Some volunteers will participate if it's a children's event. Some prefer to work with senior citizens. You have to find your thing." David Luhman '93 David Luhman '93 spends his days teaching high school English and special education in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. As a volunteer, he spreads the light of learning as a member of the board of Jua (Swahili for "sun"), an organization that builds solar electric systems for rural secondary schools in Kenya. Luhman was attracted to Jua in part because it combats the kind of despair that, in today's world, may breed terrorism. "Jua was the perfect kind of organization to instill other values, to show that education is important and gives people hope for the future," he said. Although he hasn't yet visited Kenya, Luhman said he feels drawn to the young people in photos he's seen of Jua's work. "They look very much like my high school students," he observed. The bright faces and crisp uniforms of the Kenyan students, however, contrast starkly with the rundown buildings where they study and live without electric power. Some schools use wood or kerosene for lighting, but these are dangerous, and they cost money that might otherwise go toward books. Without lights, students can't read after sundown. Jua provides a cheap, renewable energy source that "adds almost 30 percent more time to these children's learning," Luhman said. "That makes me feel very good. Even though I haven't met these people yet, I see pictures of them, how excited they are to throw a switch and have their classroom or dorm light up." -- Merril Oliver Douglas MA '82 Students in front of a school building at Jua that’s been outfitted with solar panels on the roof (top left), Kenyan students leaving school for the day (bottom left).