Q & A with Hanna, Chief of Staff at Good Counsel
- Tess Cimino
- Apr 12, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 17, 2018
Name: Hannah Sherman
School: Carleton College
Major: Spanish
Year: Senior
How did you first get involved with Good Counsel?
I was looking for a position in New York, where I was going to be to live with some family for the summer. I learned about Good Counsel through a friend involved in the Centre for Social Innovation and got funding from my school to do a social entrepreneurship related internship.
What does your role with Good Counsel entail?
Last summer I was the chief of staff so I did administrative tasks, helped manage the interns, organized lunch and learns, and ran a couple of our programs, like the cohort program. I also assisted with Good Counsel’s immigration work. Currently, I'm helping out with the grants. I’m collecting outcomes from our internship program for companies that maybe would be interested in funding us for future summer internship programs.
What are your plans after you graduate?
I'm actually trying to go to Spain to teach English and then am interested in going into education in the U.S. in the future.
What surprised you most about working with good counsel?
The community. Meeting all of the people at both Good Counsel and the Center for Social Innovation, who had all of these ideas and then executed upon those ideas was just so inspiring. I've just never met anyone who's gone out on a limb and that and tried to do something that's never really been done before. It’s great that Good Counsel is blazing their own path and doing all this great stuff.
What was your favorite part about working with the team?
I really love the people. I really enjoy working with the interns and I loved having Elizabeth as a mentor. I think she taught me a lot about being professional and I learned so much from her. I thought it was great working with the founder and when she had a meeting she would let us sit in and learn from her work in a professional space. I learned so much from listening in on her meetings and the useful tools and techniques I need to be professional in that type of situation.
Tell us something you had to overcome at Good Counsel?
It was difficult at first to step into a leadership role in such a new setting where I still had a lot to learn and I felt out of my element, but the summer helped me gain professional skills and confidence.
Why is it important to give back?
It just makes sense. When you have something that somebody else doesn't, you should help. Through small communal ways, people can help out and organize themselves to fill needs that exists. And I see that same sort of mentality in the community that Good Counsel is creating with its partners and clients- people with different skills and professional resources coming together and pooling their talents to fill these gaps of need.
What have you learned most from Good Counsel?
How to write professional emails. It’s something small but it’s an important professional skill. I teach all my friends everything I learned because they're out there trying to get jobs and most don’t have very much professional experience. I tell them, ‘say this instead of that.’ I’m also learning how to be a good leader. At school I’m a Spanish teaching assistant (TA), so I have students that I teach. I’m also a manager of fellow student workers in the dining halls. I’ve learned valuable leadership lessons from Good Counsel on how to treat people well, inspire them to do their best work, step in when they need help, and overall, how to be kind a effective leader.
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