Her Story
About Caroline
I am an art director at the Boys and Girls Club in Oakland, California, where I'm coming up on my third week. My primary experience is with elementary age children through 11, and I've been a teacher for 7 years, though I've worked with kids for over a decade now. Before this role, my entire professional career had been at Girls Inc., where I worked for the last 6 years. I moved to the Boys and Girls Club because I was really looking for more experience, and as much as I enjoyed educating young women, I think that boys can benefit from the exact same things that we teach young women. I studied Fine Arts Sculpture at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where I had some amazing opportunities to work with a team to build a monument to a young man who was shot by police. I'm currently working on my bachelor's degree - I feel like I'm chronically in education because I keep finding things that I'm interested in. I'm also a hopeful author and have been working on fiction books for the last couple of years. I was born in Manhattan but have been in California since I was young, so my whole career has been out here.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Caroline
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think my support system outside of work makes me successful. I'm very close with my mom, who's been just an integral part of my life in how I've grown up. I would say she's my best friend.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I would say is do the thing that no one tells you to do. If you sit down and you like to yo-yo, and that's your thing, and no one tells you to do it, focus on that, become a yo-yo performer, you know what I mean? Follow what you're naturally drawn to, even if others don't suggest it.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say continuing to be adaptable is the biggest challenge. In both the classroom, but also in professional situations, because things constantly change, sometimes it's slow, sometimes things move fast. You're thrown into situations that you've never been in. So I think that's really important - we need to be adaptable.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that are most important to me are kindness and professionalism. I really focus on empathy in my education. I sort of go by a motto: curiosity, not judgment. So, just approaching every situation before reacting, you know? Those are really important things to me - basically interpersonal things that I think are really important.
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