Greetings from Cheryl Zaleski
My name is Cheryl Zaleski, and I’m your new Constituency Services Associate at ICA-USA. My role will entail serving as the main contact person for questions or concerns regarding ToP, as well as making website modifications, serving as Listserv moderator, collecting course surveys, managing the database, and directing ToP marketing efforts. In addition to my role as Constituency Services Associate, I will also be serving as Assistant to the Chief Executive, as well as providing support to the Board of Directors and its Committees. Many of you have been working with Laura Dellaca here at ICA prior to my being hired, and Laura will still be the contact person for placing product and course orders, receiving payment, and all other financial transactions.
I have spent the past fifteen years working my way up from Administrative Assistant to Program Manager at an organization called The Human Relations Foundation of Chicago, whose goal was the eradication of racism, bigotry and prejudice in metropolitan Chicago. We attempted to do that through a variety of methods, most of which involved bringing people together to talk about issues affecting the various communities of Chicago. In its 15 years of operation, the Foundation researched and published more than 30 reports, held between one and two projects per month, and collaborated with organizations from the business, government, education, health care, religious and non-profit sectors. My work experience during those fifteen years included administrative assistance to the President and Board of Directors, special events planning, grant writing, budgeting, media relations, fundraising, research, and public relations. I have also volunteered for a variety of organizations and programs; I have served as a member of the Prisons and Jails Monitoring Committee for the John Howard Association, a tutoring volunteer for the Boys and Girls Club of America, a literacy volunteer with Triton College, a member of the Connecting Cultures Advisory Committee of The Field Museum, and a member of the Youth Task Force at Hull House.
The Foundation’s largest program, which had more than 11,000 participants in 10 years, was The Chicago Dinners; the Dinners brought up to 500 people together twice a year at approximately 50 private dinner parties for a deliberate discussion on the intersections of race and class in Chicago. The Vice President and I were responsible for training more than 1,000 hosts of these dinner parties in cross-cultural dialogue facilitation. As manager of the program, I was also responsible for media relations, database management, volunteer recruitment and management, marketing of materials, development of facilitation classes, design and collection of event surveys, in-kind donations, budget management, and to a very large extent, public relations.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Foundation was a supporting organization of The Chicago Community Trust; in November of 2000, we became a program of Jane Addams Hull House Association, the Chicago area’s oldest and largest social service agency. In addition to continuing our work in race relations, we also became involved in policy and advocacy work, looking at how public policy was affecting our clients and the communities in which they lived and worked.
It was during that time that I decided to go back to school to obtain my Master of Arts in Community Development degree from North Park University. I absolutely fell in love with the concept of community development, especially asset-based community development and the theory of co-production (specifically in the form of time banks and time dollars). My thesis was on “The Use of Co-Production in Prison Programs Designed for Females.” I graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade point average (while working full time) in the fall of 2005. It was around that time that The Human Relations Foundation lost funding and I was laid off. I also have a Culinary Arts degree (in addition to a Bachelor of Arts in German), so I took a year away from the non-profit sector to cook at a café inside a health club. While I enjoyed the experience, my heart was in non-profit work, and I began looking for opportunities to use the broad work experience I had gained with my newfound passion for community development. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work for the Institute of Cultural Affairs, and I look forward to talking with and meeting many of you in the upcoming months and years.
I am in the process of registering to take a GFM course, my first introduction to ToP; I had planned on attending the course last week in Nashville, but that class was cancelled, and I am now rescheduling my visit. You can contact me either by phone at (773) 769-6363 ext. 228, or by e-mail at czaleski@ica-usa.org. If your e-mail requires a response, please put ACTION in the subject line; if you are sharing information, please put FYI in the subject line.
I have spent the past fifteen years working my way up from Administrative Assistant to Program Manager at an organization called The Human Relations Foundation of Chicago, whose goal was the eradication of racism, bigotry and prejudice in metropolitan Chicago. We attempted to do that through a variety of methods, most of which involved bringing people together to talk about issues affecting the various communities of Chicago. In its 15 years of operation, the Foundation researched and published more than 30 reports, held between one and two projects per month, and collaborated with organizations from the business, government, education, health care, religious and non-profit sectors. My work experience during those fifteen years included administrative assistance to the President and Board of Directors, special events planning, grant writing, budgeting, media relations, fundraising, research, and public relations. I have also volunteered for a variety of organizations and programs; I have served as a member of the Prisons and Jails Monitoring Committee for the John Howard Association, a tutoring volunteer for the Boys and Girls Club of America, a literacy volunteer with Triton College, a member of the Connecting Cultures Advisory Committee of The Field Museum, and a member of the Youth Task Force at Hull House.
The Foundation’s largest program, which had more than 11,000 participants in 10 years, was The Chicago Dinners; the Dinners brought up to 500 people together twice a year at approximately 50 private dinner parties for a deliberate discussion on the intersections of race and class in Chicago. The Vice President and I were responsible for training more than 1,000 hosts of these dinner parties in cross-cultural dialogue facilitation. As manager of the program, I was also responsible for media relations, database management, volunteer recruitment and management, marketing of materials, development of facilitation classes, design and collection of event surveys, in-kind donations, budget management, and to a very large extent, public relations.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Foundation was a supporting organization of The Chicago Community Trust; in November of 2000, we became a program of Jane Addams Hull House Association, the Chicago area’s oldest and largest social service agency. In addition to continuing our work in race relations, we also became involved in policy and advocacy work, looking at how public policy was affecting our clients and the communities in which they lived and worked.
It was during that time that I decided to go back to school to obtain my Master of Arts in Community Development degree from North Park University. I absolutely fell in love with the concept of community development, especially asset-based community development and the theory of co-production (specifically in the form of time banks and time dollars). My thesis was on “The Use of Co-Production in Prison Programs Designed for Females.” I graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade point average (while working full time) in the fall of 2005. It was around that time that The Human Relations Foundation lost funding and I was laid off. I also have a Culinary Arts degree (in addition to a Bachelor of Arts in German), so I took a year away from the non-profit sector to cook at a café inside a health club. While I enjoyed the experience, my heart was in non-profit work, and I began looking for opportunities to use the broad work experience I had gained with my newfound passion for community development. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work for the Institute of Cultural Affairs, and I look forward to talking with and meeting many of you in the upcoming months and years.
I am in the process of registering to take a GFM course, my first introduction to ToP; I had planned on attending the course last week in Nashville, but that class was cancelled, and I am now rescheduling my visit. You can contact me either by phone at (773) 769-6363 ext. 228, or by e-mail at czaleski@ica-usa.org. If your e-mail requires a response, please put ACTION in the subject line; if you are sharing information, please put FYI in the subject line.
-- ICA-USA
posted at 2:25 PM PT
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