Transcript for the podcast New Jersey Nonprofit Leader: Heather Calverase, Teach For America

Below is the transcript of our podcast, “New Jersey Nonprofit Leader: Heather Calverase, Teach For America.” Huge thanks to new media intern Sarah Royal for work in creating the transcript. Listen to the show here.

Welcome to the Idealist podcast. I’m Amy Potthast and this is the Nonprofit Career Month podcast. October is Nonprofit Career Month, featuring the diversity of career opportunities in our nation’s nonprofit sector. Learn more at nonprofitcareermonth.org.

Today’s guest is Heather Calverase, Executive Director of Teach For America’s Newark, New Jersey region where she is responsible for growing a sustainable base of financial, community, and district awareness and support, including cultivating and stewarding donations, building strong ties with local school districts and leadership, and recruiting corps members. Prior to her position with Teach For America, Heather worked in the business sector, including nearly a decade with Kaplan, best known for its test preparation books and classes.

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Amy: Let me ask you to introduce yourself and your role at Teach For America.

Heather: Sure! My name is Heather Calverase and I’m the Executive Director for Teach For America in Newark, New Jersey, and I’ve been with the organization for two years. As Executive Director here in Newark, I oversee our operations here in Northern New Jersey, and that is comprised of everything from fundraising – which I spend a significant amount of my time on – to overseeing our programmatic support of our corps members. We have 95 corps members here in Northern New Jersey, so working with them to matriculate them to our region, to prepare them to enter their classrooms and to improve their teaching practice during their two-year commitment in our public schools in Newark and in Passaic, New Jersey. I also oversee our efforts and support for our alumni – we have nearly 400 alumni living in Northern New Jersey and we offer a variety of services and support for them, and I oversee those efforts, as well.

Amy: How big is your staff there?

Heather: We have – um, including myself, we’re a full-time team of 10.

AmyAmy: That’s a lot of work for 10 people.

Heather: It is, but at the same time it’s exciting work. Many of our staff members are alumni of Teach For America themselves, and everyone brings a passion and a commitment for this work to the table. Although the work is daunting, they’re used to taking on daunting challenges, and it’s exciting to work with such passionate people every day, and I think that it keeps everyone’s energy level up and it keeps them fresh and ready to engage in this work.

AmyAmy: And how did you get involved with Teach For America? For a long time you were working with Kaplan, which is based on education but it’s such a completely different ballgame.

Heather: Yeah, it really is, and my story is somewhat different from others who hold this position at Teach For America. Many of them are alumni of our program and that makes so much sense. My job is a little different – I was not a corps member. Teach For America was just starting up when I graduated from college, so, I did spend a significant amount of time in the for-profit educational world as you mentioned. The reasons that I came to Teach For America and the way that I found my way here, are for two reasons, primarily: One being personal, my personal story, and then professional in the connections that I made during the course of my work at Kaplan. I grew up in Appalachia, and while I’m very fortunate to be where I am now, I reflect on that experience and didn’t know that myself and many of my fellow students at that time probably weren’t being afforded the educational opportunities that we deserved, but didn’t realize it because we were all in the same boat and our perceptions were pretty limited. As I grew up and went on to college, which the majority of the folks that I grew up with and went to high school with did not have that experience, and still don’t have that experience, it really galvanized in me a want to engage in this type of work and be involved in this type of work eventually at some point in my life.

Through my work with Kaplan, in Los Angeles specifically, we provided supplemental educational services to the L.A. Unified School District, and with my work there and being in the schools in Los Angeles, I came across many Teach For America corps members. I was just so impressed by their level of commitment and the content knowledge and just the drive that they brought to work. So I wanted to learn more, and a former colleague of mine at Kaplan also works now at Teach For America, and when I moved to New Jersey he got in contact with me and let me know about opportunities at Teach For America, and I said, “Oh, you know, it sounds great! I’ve always wanted to learn more and begin to engage with folks at the organization,” and, you know, after a couple months of conversations found myself here, and couldn’t be happier about it.

Amy: When you see “Kaplan” on paper, you sort of jump to certain conclusions about what that work meant, but in fact there are a lot more similarities to the work you were doing with Kaplan with what your corps members are doing with Teach For America than maybe meets the eye.

Heather: There’s certainly a for-profit component to it, too – so, at the end of the day they need to make money, certainly, but yes. It’s an aspect of their work, like organizations and companies that engage in test preparation and provide similar products and services, that many people aren’t aware of.

Amy: And what’s different about working for a nonprofit? I know TFA – a lot of the folks I’ve met who work for TFA, if they weren’t corps members, if that’s not how they got started, a lot of times they’re coming from Corporate America. And I’m just kind of curious what you think is the attraction to Teach For America, for all those folks who are entering the nonprofit sector for the first time through Teach For America as an organization. But also, how has it been different? Or has it been?

Heather: Yeah, so, I think it’s interesting – and I don’t mean to speak broadly for everyone making the for-profit to nonprofit switch – but for me specifically and I think for my colleagues that were not corps members that have come on to Teach For America, I think one of the two primary attractions to Teach For America is the fact that Teach For America works to be really strategic and professional in all its interactions, and is really run with a kind of a keen eye and a mind for business, in a way. So I think it’s that, while at the same time it doesn’t detract in any way from the focus on the mission, the reason why we’re engaging in this work – I think it’s the intersection of the two there that makes Teach For America such an attractive place to bring one’s skill sets and passion for this work to fruition here. So I think for folks that are looking for more than just a job, there’s the mission orientation and the passion and people just getting so excited and engaged in this work. Really, it’s not a job per se, where they might have felt that way in the for-profit arena: like “I get up and I go to my work but it’s really not what I’m passionate about.” And they can bring that to the table, and I had certainly felt this way as well, while at the same time having the structures and the organization and the strategic focus that allows us to be successful in our work with a keen eye toward consistently trying to improve what we’re trying to do, and getting better every year – which is I think something that everyone can appreciate, they want to get better at what they’re doing. But those that specifically come from the for-profit world where that’s a language and a mindset that they’re used to – it really resonates for them. So it’s not a so much a culture-shock per se, that people envision that working for a nonprofit might be or making that transition from for-profit to nonprofit work might be.

Amy: So Teach For America is not a small mom-and-pop – I mean, certainly they have to focus on raising money and all those kinds of things – but it’s not like a small mom-and-pop nonprofit that could, you know, fold any second, and isn’t generic stereotypes of idealist people getting together but not really knowing how to run an organization soundly. It’s none of those things.

Heather: Yeah, I think certainly – Teach For America is coming up on its 20th anniversary, and we’ve grown significantly in a scale over that time and are hoping to continue to grow. It has systems in place, where we’re not a completely grassroots organization. We’re a nationwide organization with 35 regions and a national office, so…

Amy: How many staffers are there?

Heather: As full-time staff, I believe we’re over 1200, and obviously we’re all working in support of our corps members and our alumni in what they’re doing to close the achievement gap, and realize educational equity, and many of our full-time staffers are in our region, providing that direct support, and a number of national staff providing support to the region so that we can productively engage in our work. So yeah, it doesn’t have that grassroots-y feel, if you will, that I think many people when they hear the term “nonprofit” – perhaps that’s what comes to mind. At the same time, it provides the entrepreneurial opportunities and we engage in a lot of grassroots work at the same time. I mean, that’s integral to our work in our communities, and with building relationships with stakeholders in our respective communities, and I think that’s why our regional approach lends itself so well to making sure we’re providing the right services and support based on what our communities need, and those are all different.

Amy: How did you get involved with nonprofits to begin with? Were you a volunteer growing up, or is this really the first experience you had in a nonprofit setting?

Heather: It’s not, it’s not, and I think that might have made it a little less scary for me to take that leap. I probably would have come in with a different set of mindsets or thoughts about what nonprofit work looks like and what career opportunities would be available, if I hadn’t had experiences prior. In high school I was a mentor – kind of a Big Brothers Big Sisters set-up. In college, I worked for Habitat For Humanity, and then I did work for a nonprofit organization for two and a half years right out of graduate school that did environmental and telecommunications research for state governments. So I’ve had both a professional and just personal experience working with nonprofit organizations prior to my for-profit time with Kaplan, and then coming back to that here at Teach For America.

Amy: So for Nonprofit Career Month, we couldn’t figure out one single tagline for our marketing, so we came up with a bunch of different taglines that rotate through our logo every time you refresh our homepage. So, one is “… work that matters,” or “Nonprofit work is work that pays,” “It’s work that’s rewarding,” or “It’s work that makes a difference,” and I’m just wondering if you could think on your time at Teach For America – how would you characterize your work?

Heather: Yeah, so you know ,I think all of those resonate with me. The one that most resonates with me is “… work that’s rewarding,” and certainly you can find that in the for-profit sector, but I think at this time a lot of people are really taking a step back, either because they’re unemployed and having an opportunity now to really reflect on it, or they’re engaged in work that they don’t necessarily find to be that fulfilling, and now really looking for something that is rewarding not only in means of a paycheck, and nonprofit work is work that can pay, and can more than pay the bills, and I think people don’t necessarily associate nonprofit work with work that can pay and be financially rewarding. But they’re really looking for something that’s emotionally and spiritually rewarding, and aligned with their own core values and what they’re hoping to bring to the table and really have an impact – have their life have meaning and have an impact in their immediate communities. I think that’s where nonprofit work really, really provides an avenue for people to find that, and I hope with Idealist and offering Nonprofit Career Month that people will really take a step back and perhaps think outside the box and consider if nonprofit careers and nonprofit work could provide that sense of fulfillment for them and really reflect on what they’re looking to do and where to align their own core values and missions into a nonprofit that may be seeking someone just like them

Amy: Thank you so much, Heather, for your time. I really appreciate it.

Heather: Oh, no problem! It was my pleasure.

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Learn more about Teach For America at Teachforamerica.org. Listen to more Nonprofit Career Month podcasts at nonprofitcareermonth.org/podcasts.

Special thanks today to Meg Busse.

This show was produced with the help of Sarah Royal and Douglas Coulter. I’m Amy Potthast. Thanks for listening. To find more good things to do, go to Idealist.org.

If you have enjoyed our podcasts, please show your support by going to iTunes and leaving a review and a rating of this episode or others that you’ve liked. You can also send us feedback to podcasts [at] idealist [dot] org.