By Sarah Rose :
It is a pleasure to introduce you to one of our Catholic Community Connection Fellows, Julia Ventura. Julia is the Organizational Development Fellow at Cleveland Catholic Charities for the summer of 2023.
Julia is set to graduate from Notre Dame College (NDC) in the spring of 2024 with a degree in Human Resource Management and a minor in management. Julia is a member of the Notre Dame cheerleading team. Additionally, Julia serves as a writing tutor with TRIO Student Support Services for first generation college students at NDC’s writing center.
Julia first heard about this fellowship program from a business professor who knows Marian Rubin (President, Catholic Community Connection.) and after talking with her, Julia was drawn to the opportunity to not only gain on-the-job experience, but also connect with people. “I was very interested in connecting with the other fellows, especially knowing some of them weren’t from my school.”
During her fellowship with Catholic Charities, Julia has done numerous tasks regarding project management and planning. “I’ve also been allowed to learn Human Resource roles because my supervisor knew that was my major and wanted me to gain experience in that role too. I job shadowed a recruiter to learn the basic roles of HR and I created interview questions for employees and conducted informational interviews with them to get to know them more on a professional level.”
Julia enjoyed the project planning part of her job. “I created a calendar that has all volunteer events for the year from all counties Catholic Charities works with, and we are working on a big event with Catholic Charities USA that Cleveland is hosting, so we’re planning out the volunteer tasks and I created service descriptions for them. I also got to sit in on a policy meeting and a recruitment and retention meeting which was a great experience.”
She says she most enjoyed meeting a lot of people through the informational interviews she conducted and being able to network and connect with people who have been in their position for 20 plus years as well as people who were more entry level. “It was interesting to see how they got to where they are and hear their advice.”
Julia greatly enjoyed working with her supervisor (Christine Horne) weekly and being asked directly what more she wanted to learn. Her supervisor was very open to helping her do work that directly paired with her major. “She’s always available and open for me to talk to her and ask questions. She’s very supportive and easy to get along with. . . she and my mentor (Nora Santiago) offered to look over my resume and give me feedback and suggestions to update it and help me in the future. “
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