AmeriCorps Connections

What if your service year already set you up to run for office?

Laura Perez served in the founding year of City Year Milwaukee and stayed for a second year because she loved it so much. That’s when she learned she wasn’t only a great follower. She was a leader. Her path took her into the classroom, nonprofit work, and community organizing, and then onto a fellow AmeriCorps member’s school board campaign. They won. Today Laura is on staff at New Politics Academy, helping servant leaders find their path to political leadership.

Dev Myers grew up in a family of service. His dad served in the military, his mom was a nurse, and his grandmother fought for clean, affordable housing in her small South Carolina town. After watching January 6th unfold a few blocks from his Capitol Hill home, Dev committed to making politics his full-time work. He now leads recruitment for the New Power Project, which has supported 74 Black and brown candidates running for everything from water commissioner to governor. He also ran for and serves as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in DC.

Together, they talk with Nicki about why a community garden is community organizing, why state and local office shapes national policy, and why fewer than 20% of elected leaders come from a servant leader background. Nicki is a 2020 New Politics Academy graduate herself.

🗳️ New Politics Academy programs (free for servant leaders!)

Answering the Call: Reflection-based. Write your leadership mission statement and your “shadow” mission statement, and decide whether running is right for you.
Bootcamps: For anyone who wants to support a campaign team, especially on the fundraising side.
Foundations: Tactical training for anyone planning to run in the next two to five years. Build your public narrative, your fundraising pitch, and your campaign team, with feedback from campaign advisors.

Not ready to commit? Try a 90-minute session or a lunch and learn, or add your name to the Join Us list.
 
👉 https://newpoliticsacademy.org

🎙️ AmeriCorps Connections tells the stories of alumni who were changed by national service. Subscribe and share so these stories keep reaching people. (It actually matters!)

⚠️ New Politics Academy is a nonpartisan nonprofit. Featuring an organization or its candidates is not an endorsement of any candidate or campaign. We are here for the service, always!

Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.
Link 👉 USE THIS LINK Look for our my guest blog for the Idealist Career Advice blog! 👩‍💻 

📲 Follow us on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/americorpsconnections/
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🎙️ AmeriCorps Connections tells the stories of alumni who were changed by national service. Subscribe and share so these stories keep reaching people.

What if your leftover Segal Education Award could make you a better teacher in six weeks?

Destiny Schlinker served as a FoodCorps AmeriCorps member in Springdale, Arkansas, from 2013 to 2015. She led garden and cooking lessons in the state's largest school district, where her students raised 12 chickens in a purple coop they built together and bottle-fed two baby goats in the middle of the city. Today she's Senior Manager of Leadership Pipelines at FoodCorps and co-owns Blue Mountain Vegetable Farm in a town of about 80 people.

Destiny tells Nicki how garden lessons bring second-grade adjectives and fifth-grade haikus to life, and what it meant when a former student stopped her at a college career fair to say he still remembered those energy balls. She also talks about how FoodCorps rebuilt after losing its federal funding, going from 200 AmeriCorps positions in 19 states to 50 in nine, and the new ways it's investing in leaders.

Use this a code where folks can say they heard through AmeriCorps Connections Podcast!
Visit website at www.foodcorps.org
email at [email protected]

🍎 FoodCorps programs featured in this episode
FoodE: Food Education in the Classroom Micro-Credential
With Teachers College, Columbia University
• Six weeks, online and asynchronous, with optional live office hours
• Built for educators teaching kids in a classroom, garden, or nonprofit setting (most useful for K-5)
• Earns a certificate, a badge, and continuing education credits in many states
• $295, and eligible for your Segal Education Award
• Upcoming cohorts: November 2, January 4, March 1, April 26

👉 FoodCorps Member Position
• Full-time, 11-month contract role (August 3 to July 11), renewable for a second or third year
• Two tracks: Food Education (classroom and garden) and School Nutrition (district child nutrition teams)
• About $40,000 for the term, plus PTO and health, dental, and vision insurance
• Open in Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, New Mexico, and California
• No teaching degree required. Summer camp or Boys & Girls Club experience counts!

👉 Kindred Fellowship for School Nutrition Leaders
• Free, nine-month fellowship (October to June) for 30 district school food leaders
• In-person kickoff in Philadelphia, about 10 virtual sessions, and a closing Hill Day in DC
• Applications open in May and close in August

👉 FoodCorps Leadership Network
Everyone from all three programs joins the alumni network on Slack, with mentors, job boards, training, and policy opportunities.
📬 Connect with Destiny: [email protected]
She's happy to send details on using your Segal Award.

Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.
Link 👉 USE THIS LINK Look for our my guest blog for the Idealist Career Advice blog! 👩‍💻 

🍿 Snack smart while you listen — Pops Up Popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH. Use code NICKI10 for 10% off at https://popzup.com./

🎧 Listen and rate the show on our streaming platform: https://americorpsconnect.transistor.fm/
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💼 Connect with Nicki on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicki-fiocco/

Saylor Ogle has done four AmeriCorps terms and counting, and somewhere along the way she became "the Lorax." She speaks for the trees, plants them, mulches them, prunes them, and waters them across Knoxville, Tennessee.

In this episode of our Tennessee alumni series, Saylor walks through every stop on that path: an after-school program at a Baptist center, college prep tours with Emerald Youth Foundation, a solo term as a Greenway Ranger cutting brand-new mountain bike trails with a trail-building mentor named Duane Miley, an unexpected career in geophysical engineering, and now urban forestry with the City of Knoxville.

She talks about the AmeriCorps connection that turned an internship interview into a full-time job before she'd even walked out the door, the friendships that carried into her wedding party, and why she still drives past the trees she planted years ago just to see how big they've gotten.
If you're weighing a service year, or wondering what comes after one, this conversation is for you.

About AmeriCorps Connections
AmeriCorps Connections lifts up stories of AmeriCorps alums — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started.
If this episode moves you — don't let that feeling sit there! 💛

Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.
Link 👉 IDEALIST Social Impact Jobs

Check out our Nicki Fiocco's guest blog for the Idealist Career Advice 👩‍💻

🍿 Snack smart while you listen — PopzUp Popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH.
Use code NICKI10 for 10%

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📲 Follow us on Instagram - AmeriCorps Connections
💼 Connect with Nicki on LinkedIn - Nicki Fiocco

🏀 From Coaching Basketball to Building Careers — One Service Year at a Time

Tavon Johnson didn't just do one AmeriCorps term. He did three — and each one built directly on the last. 🌟
Starting as a tutor and basketball coach with Great Oaks Charter School, moving into workforce development with the Choice Program at UMBC in his hometown of Baltimore, and then leading fellow VISTA members through the chaos of COVID with Transform Mid-Atlantic — Tavon's path shows exactly what it looks like when a service year becomes a career blueprint.

Now a career counselor with Milwaukee Job Corps (and running a youth resource hub on the side 👏), Tavon opens up about the moment that changed how he saw systemic barriers up close, why "identity capital" might be the most underrated benefit of national service, and why he thinks we should stop calling it a "gap year" for good.

About AmeriCorps Connections
AmeriCorps Connections lifts up stories of AmeriCorps alums — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started.
If this episode moves you — don't let that feeling sit there! 💛

Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.
Link 👉 IDEALIST Social Impact Jobs

Check out our first AC Connections Podcast guest blogger for the Idealist Career Advice blog Sarah Vagley Middleton 👩‍💻

🍿 Snack smart while you listen — PopzUp Popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH. Use code NICKI10 for 10%

📺 You Tube
📲 Follow us on Instagram - AmeriCorps Connections
💼 Connect with Nicki on LinkedIn - Nicki Fiocco

Michaela Barnett: From AmeriCorps VISTA to Congressional Candidate — Science, Sustainability, and Solving for What Matters

What does it look like when a service year becomes a launchpad? Michaela Barnett's AmeriCorps VISTA year at University Tennessee (TU) Recycling in Knoxville wasn't something she planned — she stumbled into it while applying for a different job entirely. But that year handed her three community problems to solve, the freedom to figure them out, and a $100,000 grant for what's now UT's Grow Lab. That was just the beginning.

Michaela went on to earn her PhD in civil engineering, where she sat at the intersection of behavioral science, engineering, and design. She wanted to understand not just what needed to change — but why people make the decisions they do, and how systems either support or undermine the change we need. That question led her to start KnoxFill, a sustainability-focused refillery that's now a community anchor in East Tennessee, stocking hundreds of bulk refillable products and shelving goods from 50 Tennessee-based makers and small businesses. And then it led her to DC, as a science policy fellow inside the House of Representatives.

Now she's running for Congress in Tennessee's 2nd District — a seat that's been red since Reconstruction — because she believes the next layer of change happens at the policy level. And she's doing it the way she's done everything else: building local, investing in community, and treating the work itself as service.

This conversation goes deep on systems thinking, what a service year actually gives you, why we need to expand national service right now, and what it means to carry AmeriCorps values all the way to the floor of Congress.
Michaela is #StillGettingThingsDone.

Links & Resources:
🌿 Knox Fill
🗳️ Michaela for Tennessee
📣 Campaign: MB4TN

About AmeriCorps Connections
AmeriCorps Connections lifts up stories of AmeriCorps alums — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started.
If this episode moves you — don't let that feeling sit there! 💛

Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.
Link 👉 IDEALIST Social Impact Jobs

Check out our first AC Connections Podcast guest blogger for the Idealist Career Advice blog Sarah Vagley Middleton 👩‍💻

🍿 Snack smart while you listen — PopzUp Popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH. Use code NICKI10 for 10%

📺 You Tube
📲 Follow us on Instagram - AmeriCorps Connections
💼 Connect with Nicki on LinkedIn - Nicki Fiocco

Eric Ragone & Laura Rog | AmeriCorps Connections
What does it look like when your service year doesn't just change your path — it catalyzes everything that comes after? That's the through line in this conversation.

Today I am here with Eric Ragone, Major Gifts Officer for the 40 Forward Capital Campaign at God's Love We Deliver, and Laura Rog, Chief Service Officer for New York City and Director of NYC Service. We're recording from the Himan Brown Charitable Trust Media Room at God's Love We Deliver's Liberty Brooklyn location in Sunset Park — which, yes, is as cool as it sounds.

Eric was recently recognized at Gracie Mansion by Mayor Mamdani with the 2026 AmeriCorps Alum Impact Award through NYC Service — an honor that recognized not just his own work, but the 20,000 volunteers and dedicated team behind God's Love We Deliver's mission.

Two AmeriCorps alums who found their life's work through service — one who deferred a full-time job offer to serve and never looked back, and one who has built a career in national service from the ground up
The story of God's Love We Deliver: 40 years, 40 million meals, and a $40 million capital campaign expanding capacity to reach even more New Yorkers living with severe illness.

What NYC Service is doing right now to keep New Yorkers engaged — and what both guests want anyone mid-service or finishing up to hear

About AmeriCorps Connections
AmeriCorps Connections lifts up stories of AmeriCorps alums — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started.

If this episode moves you — don't let that feeling sit there! 💛 Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are.

Check out our first AC Connections Podcast guest blogger for the Idealist Career Advice blog Sarah Vagley Middleton 👩‍💻

🍿 And snack smart while you listen — Pops Up Popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH. Use code NICKI10 for 10% off at PopzUp.com

📺 You Tube
📲 Follow us on Instagram - AmeriCorps Connections
💼 Connect with Nicki on LinkedIn - Nicki Fiocco

Links & Resources:
🏆 NYC Service — Mayoral Service Recognition Program (AmeriCorps Alum Impact Award) 
🌐 NYC Service — Volunteer in New York City / Every Action Every New Yorker 
🍽️ God's Love We Deliver
📦 God's Love We Deliver — 40 Forward Capital Campaign 

Shayna Canty didn't find AmeriCorps — AmeriCorps found her. 🙌 From a dermatologist who saw something in her she couldn't yet see in herself, to a service year in Scranton that changed everything, Shayna's story is one of those "just say yes" journeys that reminds you why national service matters. 💥 

Now she's Pennsylvania's first youth commissioner in over seven years, a Service Year Alliance Alums Amplify member, and still finding new ways to show up for her community. She is STILL GETTING THINGS DONE! 🔥

If this episode moves you — don't let that feeling sit there! 💛 Check out our featured partner Idealist for social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and ways to give back right where you are. Link 👉IDEALIST LINK

🍿 And snack smart while you listen — Popzup popcorn is a clean, chemical-free microwave popcorn from Somersworth, NH. Use code NICKI10 for 10% off at popzup.com.

🎙️ Subscribe, share, and leave a review — it makes a real difference!

#AmeriCorpsConnections #StillGettingThingsDone #NationalService #AmeriCorps #ServiceYear #CommunityImpact

What happens when your AmeriCorps service doesn't just change your career — it unlocks the final piece of who you are? For Tisha Vonique, two terms of national service revealed the third pillar of her identity: health equity. And she hasn't stopped building since.

About This Episode

Tisha Vonique describes herself as a "catalyzer of curiosity" — and that phrase alone tells you everything you need to know about how she moves through the world. A strategist, coach, and community organizer based in Central Texas, Tisha has built a life around three interlocking pillars: education, community, and health equity. And she'll tell you directly: AmeriCorps gave her the third one.

"When you made a conscious choice to do AmeriCorps, you made a conscious choice to say and to feel that things can be better. Your experience as an AmeriCorps member was, and is, an expression of resistance." — Tisha Vonique

#StillGettingThingsDone

Ready to Turn Intention Into Action?

If this conversation activated something in you — don't just let that feeling sit there. Find social-impact jobs, volunteer opportunities, and community initiatives at Idealist — connecting 40 million+ people across 180 countries with opportunities to do good.

Find your next opportunity here: 👉 IDEALIST    And check out Idealist Days — monthly dates of local, positive action!

Connect With Tisha Vonique

Austin AmeriCorps Alumni Chapter:

@AustinAmeriCorpsAlums | @ATXAmeriCorpsAlums on LinkedIn

Interested in joining the chapter leadership or showing up to events? Find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Linktree. Whether you served in Austin or just call it home now — you belong here.

About AmeriCorps Connections

AmeriCorps Connections lifts up real stories of AmeriCorps alumni — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started!

What happens when an artist, a restless servant-leader, and a lifelong learner become the same person? You get Rok Locksley — AmeriCorps NCCC alum (2003), AmeriCorps State & National alum (2023), and two-time Peace Corps volunteer who spent decades painting murals in small-town Texas, building youth centers in Eastern Europe, gamifying parks in Illinois, and learning — over and over again — that the work is never really about you.

In this episode, Rok takes us through a life shaped by national and international service: from rebuilding a flood-damaged park in Castroville, TX and painting the pool mural that's still standing 20 years later, to opening a youth center in the Moldovan village that literally translates to "Rok's Place." (Yes, really.) He even painted the resurrection scene on the ceiling of the local Orthodox church. Just another Tuesday in the Peace Corps.

But the moment that stopped us both in our tracks? When his Moldovan counterpart Vadim looked at him after the newly-built, perfectly frumos youth center was already full of kids, computers already broken, and said quietly: "Rok. This youth center is not for you. It's for them."

That's the line. That's the whole podcast.

Rok is currently a Training Designer for the Peace Corps, where he brings his art, his gamification obsession, and his deep community development roots into designing learning experiences that actually stick. He's also living proof that serving once is just the beginning.

🎙️ These alums aren't just reflecting — they're #StillGettingThingsDone

🔗 Subscribe for new episodes every week featuring real, unfiltered stories from AmeriCorps alumni who are still getting things done.

AmeriCorps Connections lifts up real stories of AmeriCorps alumni — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started!

Catherine Hicks came into her AmeriCorps year with 30 years of tech behind her, a master's in public health ahead of her, and a personal connection to the work that made everything matter more.

A fresh alum at the time of recording, Catherine served with the National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse in the Bay Area — a harm reduction organization doing life-saving work distributing Naloxone and fentanyl test strips to communities facing the overdose crisis. She brought her tech background to modernize the organization's website and expand its reach, translating it into multiple languages so more people could access resources.
But the moment that defined her year? Hearing back that a friend used the Naloxone training she provided — and someone came home because of it.

Catherine's story is about showing up even when you keep hearing "no." It's about finding out that your lived experience isn't a liability — it's your greatest asset. And it's about the quiet, radical act of seeing every person as human.

"We need to find the humanity in all people — not just people like us." — Catherine Hicks
#StillGettingThingsDone
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 🤝 This episode is part of a special series produced in partnership with 250&Beyond: Our American Story and our partners:

The National Museum and Center for Service — A national organization developing a truly national museum and center dedicated to honoring and inspiring service in ALL its forms.

Independent Sector — The only national membership organization that brings together a diverse community of changemakers, nonprofits, foundations, and corporations working to strengthen civil society and ensure all people in the United States thrive.

WETA — Founded in 1961, WETA is the leading public broadcasting station in the nation's capital, serving their community with educational, cultural, news, and public affairs programs and services. 
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AmeriCorps Connections lifts up real stories of AmeriCorps alumni — 100+ featured! Honest, unfiltered truth about national service. These alums aren't just reflecting — they're still getting things done! We believe these voices deserve to be heard, and we're just getting started!