I an currently Volunteer Coordinator at the New York Center for Children (NYCC) on the Upper East Side. NYCC is a free health clinic / children's advocacy center working with child abuse. We provide evaluations, therapy, tutoring, and mentoring to children who have suffered or are suspected to have suffered abuse. We also work directly with ACS, the NYPD, and the DA's Office.

In July I returned with my partner from a year in South America (the main photo here was taken in the Sacred Valley, Peru). We traveled through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Northern Chile - stopping for 6 months to volunteer in Chile with Voluntarios de la Esperanza (also known as VEGlobal) - and continuing to travel through Argentina and Uruguay on our way back home. I served both as general volunteer and as Chair of the Education Committee at VE, an organizaiton that works with underprivileged Chilean children in a variety of facilities (ranging from homes for abused children to cases of extreme poverty to schools for mentally challenged children or children with autism).

Before that I was Executive Assistant at HomeBase, a public policy law firm specializing in technical assistance to end homelessness, in San Francisco, CA. WHile there I also both volunteered and worked at A Home Away from Homelessness. I have also worked as a camp counselor at Camp Fiver, a tuition-free camp for inner-city NY youth located in upstate NY.

I graduated from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA in May 2004, during which I acted as a volunteer at The Transition House, New England's oldest domestic violence shelter. Links to all relevent organizations are listed below:

http://www.newyorkcenterforchildren.org
http://www.voluntariosesperanza.org/joomla/
http://www.homebaseccc.org
http://www.homeaway.org
http://www.fiver.org
http://www.transitionhouse.org

Social Awareness
Empathy
Community Programs
Equal Opportunity
Housing, Food, Shelter are BASIC Rights
Environmental Protection (How do we feed all the hungry and cut down on overpopulation?)
Global Awareness
Violence Prevention (!!!): especially the violence most turn a blind eye to - that of family members, that behind closed doors.
Job Training / Job Placement
Educational Opportunities
Mentoring
Stability for Disadvantaged Youth
Acceptance - if we were all the same job competition would be fierce and you would never get a table at a restaurant...

Toni Morrison
Martin Luther King Jr.
General Pinochet (He actually had some good policy initiatives for rural chileans. I also firmly believe that anyone truly committed to change will want and seek out the loudest most influential voices of those who believe the exact opposite, for how else can you create a platform?)
Adolf Hitler (See above. If we could use his charisma for GOOD....)
Hillary Clinton
Angelina Jolie (And not just because she is gorgeous - I would be curious what she would have non-multi-millionaires do for global causes)
James Carville
Dr. Paul Farmer
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Really, haven't the representatives of the people of CA spoken pretty damn clearly?!? How do you justify the continuious veto-ing? How?)

Oh, so many.... I am one of those people who listens to songs for the lyrics (gasp) and reads poetry. Cannot think of a bunch offhand right now but this will be updated...

"I am not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of jumping." - A friend's Professor, told to me anecdotally

"You need me like the wind needs the trees to blow in. Like the moon needs poetry, you need me." - Magnetic Fields

"If we were meant to talk more than listen we would have two mouths and one ear" - Mark Twain

"I don't want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle's flame when we eat,

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us---
Not a roof but a field of stars."
- Jane Cooper

"if you're following an angel / doesn't mean you have to / throw your body out a window" - They Might Be Giants

Favorite from when I was younger (more than answered these days):
"I am looking for someone who can take as much as I give; give back as much as I need; and still have the will to live. I am intense; I am in pain; I am in need; and I feel forsaken like the things I gave away" - Indigo Girls

And... "Wherever she was, there was Eden." -Mark Twain wrote on the tombstone on his wife, taken from his satiric short story 'Adam & Eve'

Argentina

Bolivia

Canada

Chile

Ecuador

England/United Kingdom

France

Greece

Italy

Mexico

Peru

Scotland

Switzerland

Uruguay

Within the U.S:
-Alaska
-Arizona
-California
-Connecticut
-DC
-Delaware
-Florida
-Idaho
-Maine
-Maryland
-Massachusetts
-Missouri
-Nebraska
-Nevada
-New Hampshire
-New Jersey
-New Mexico
-New York
-Oregon
-Pennsylvania
-Rhode Island
-Texas
-Vermont
-Washington
-Wyoming

Reading; Poetry; Working out; Traveling; Trying new foods; Wine Tasting; the Ocean; Sudoku; Crosswords; Politics; City Walks; Theatre; Painting; Pets; (someday) Kids; Outdoorsy shtuff; Writing; (currently) Grad School research (Public Policy - for 2009); Practicing Spanish...

Conversational/High Intermediate Spanish
Basic American Sign Language