Directly after college, I immersed myself in the national nonprofit space through the FAO Schwarz Fellowship. The fellowship, working together with leading organizations across the northeastern United States, recruits a select cohort of graduating college seniors for a unique combination of direct service and strategic work. I had prior experience in both domains from my time in college: I had been an Advising Fellow for Matriculate, advising high-achieving low-income students applying to college, and a Communications Intern for OutRight International, standardizing communications for an international LGBTIQ Human Rights NGO. Despite how the COVID-19 pandemic situated itself in the middle of my college experience, I had persevered and still served the causes most important to me. Wanting to further develop my skills as a social impact leader, I thus set myself in one of the nation’s leading workforce development organizations at Year Up United. As a data analyst, I readily put theory into action in a mission-driven context. Within my first two weeks, I was tasked with designing and executing a survey intended for a population of nearly five-hundred. Before the end of that month, I not only had to collate and analyze the resulting data, but present findings to the entirety of our market staff, in turn enabling them to better serve our ever-expanding student constituency. I’ve since carried out dozens of similar data projects, consistently transforming the resulting insights into action, strategy, and impact that further our social mission. Whether through delivering insights directly to cross-functional leaders or teaching them how to deliver those insights, I deliberately ensured that my impact would endure far past any departure from the organization. Though I've had great strategic accomplishments in this role, I've also proactively engaged with service opportunities throughout my time at the organization. I've mentored dozens of participants in how to effectively leverage data in the workplace, teaching everything from Microsoft Excel to the soft skills needed for meaningful analysis. I've personally advised a handful more towards full-time corporate sector employment, in spite of their lack of a four-year degree. They understood not only the structural challenges they faced, but also practical solutions towards economic mobility. In coaching these interns, I not only guided them towards permanent hire-- I ensured that they would have the resiliency to persist and grow in their roles, and thereby advocating for change even from within Corporate America. Even beyond what I've been able to accomplish in the past two years, I recognize that there only remains potential for more. Rather than being a passive learner from the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, I've become an advisor and thought partner for the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation's leadership. I've become a peer mentor for other fellows, helping them balance their passion for impact with the realities of the work structures they navigate. Through developing frameworks for recruiting, supporting, and training future fellows, I've ensured that my growth would not be limited to myself: rather, my social impact leadership would lead to further impact leaders in turn. As I progress onto my graduate education, I'll continue to not only drive impact for society-- rather, I'll continue to ensure such impact is reproducible, scalable, and intentional.

For those patient enough to listen, I often explain that there are three renditions of the Philippines: one for the rich, one for the poor, and a vast canyon in-between. There are other ways to frame it: there are passengers and their tricycle drivers, the company heirs and employees, the over-educated and the much-maligned "masa." It therefore comes as no real surprise that Filipinos rank 104 out of 142 in the World Happiness Report's "Inequality" metric, a whopping 2.6 standard deviation between individuals' reported "Life Evaluation" scores. (The Netherlands, ranking 1st in inequality, only saw a 1.4 standard deviation. Americans, despite a declining average, had a 1.6 standard deviation.) Some Filipino respondents experienced a quality of life surpassing that of the so-called "First World," and others struggled to maintain life. Perhaps it's surprising to see a point of agreement: Filipinos stood at #7 of the Top 10 reporting "positive emotions," with 82.1% expressing positive emotions at the time of survey administration. Finland, ranking #1 in overall "Life Evaluation" scores, only had 76.3% of respondents feeling positively-- but it did rank as #7 in the Top 10 least negative countries, having 15.4% report negative emotions whereas 34.6% of Filipinos had. Inspecting further, "positive emotion" rankings correlated very little with "Life Evaluation" scores. In actuality, the top 8 "positive" countries had inequality rankings no higher than 71 and GDP per capita rankings no higher than 41, indicating massive internal disagreement on their perceived national quality of life and access to resources The Top 10 least negative countries (ranked closer to #1 the less negative they were), if anything, correlated much more with a general quality of life. The World Happiness Report maintains emotions as "significant supports" for "life evaluations," but avoids factoring them in for overall rankings given their vulnerability to individualized "events of the day." In the context of the Philippines, this means two things: despite "delicadeza," a significant contingent (34.6%) of Filipinos are open in expressing negative emotions. Yet despite all the negative drivers depressing Philippine quality of life, Filipinos (82.1%) are able to express positive emotion in the face of adversity, enough that they are the 7th most perceivably "positive" population surveyed. Perhaps it is better to say that optimism is an integral part of the Filipino. They might have the 89th largest GDP per capita and 78th in perceptions of corruption, yet Philippine respondents are the 19th most free-feeling, with 92.1% feeling free to "do what [they] want" with their lives. Ironically, only 71.7% of Americans felt similarly, sliding to 115th. As I proceed onto a Master's of Science in Public Policy & Management: Data Analytics, it becomes critical to me not only to master the computational techniques used to gather this information, but to properly leverage these insights towards civil empowerment. Filipinos are not 91st in generosity because they are ungenerous-- 71.2% of these respondents had helped a stranger in the last year, after all, and 44.5% had volunteered (4th globally)-- but because generosity was measured on the basis of donation to charity, which only 22.9% of Filipinos were able to. In my reading, it is more of a problem of having to equip your own oxygen mask before helping your neighbor. Thus, inequality becomes the clear parameter to optimize. Indeed, for both Filipinos and Americans, reducing economic precarity and improving "social support" through policy reform may become key to benevolent civic potential. As I learn to balance work with life, I realize this as well: that life extends beyond the numbers of work, and giving is a virtue in and of itself in all its forms.