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Greg Propper is Managing Director and General Counsel for Be the Change, Inc., a national non-profit based in Boston, MA. In this capacity, Greg also oversees the campaign for universal national service, which by the close of 2009, seeks to give every young person the opportunity to serve for a year. As a 2001-2002 Dutko Fellow, Greg served in the political department of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) where he helped recruit candidates in targeted congressional districts around the country and coordinated the issue advocacy department.
After the 2002 election cycle, Greg moved to Boston where he served as the national mobilization coordinator for City Year and helped lead the "Save Americorps" campaign of 2003 that restored cut funding from the federally sponsored national service program. Most recently, Greg graduated from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where he was a public service scholar and performed internships with the Appleseed Foundation in Washington, D.C. and with the New York City Law Department juvenile prosecution division in the Bronx, N.Y. Greg is the recently appointed Chair of the Junior Board of Trustees at Cardozo.
During my junior year of college at Tufts, I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Washington, D.C. where I wrote a term paper on AmeriCorps, our government's national service program. I remember thinking to myself, and boldly stating outloud to some of my friends, that “my ideal job would be to advocate on behalf of AmeriCorps and national service someday." It was the perfect combination of politics, policy and my interest in service. With that said, I did not have a clue where to begin.
Upon graduating from college, I was fortunate to become a member of the first class of Dutko Fellows and began work at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), first in the political department where I helped recruit qualified candidates to run for Congress in competitive districts, and later as a full time employee of the DCCC where I coordinated the issue advocacy department and the production of over 200 issue ads across the country. This was a surreal experience- my first job out of college and I was sitting in daily strategy meetings with some of the great minds of the Democratic Party.
My experience and contacts at the DCCC led me to a job with the National Democratic Convention in Boston the following year. I moved to Boston, but had a five month period between my move and the start of my new job. I once again turned to Deb Jospin and others I had met during my time in Washington, who led me to a temporary job with the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts where I helped create their alumni engagement program. One alumna I met while there is an amazing woman named Vanessa Kirsch, whose husband, Alan Khazei, co-founded City Year, one of the country's largest and most effective AmeriCorps programs.
Because of my political experience, and my work with Vanessa at Tufts, Alan Khazei asked me to join the team at City Year at the time AmeriCorps was facing a funding crisis in Congress and City Year was leading a coalition of organizations to "save AmeriCorps" by educating members of Congress and the public about the importance of national service. A mere 3 years after graduating from college, I was actually advocating on behalf of AmeriCorps, my "dream job." I am excited to say that, after an outpouring of public support, and action taken by our public leaders, AmeriCorps was indeed saved, and experienced the largest budget appropriation in its history.
Today, after having completed law school, I am back to work trying to expand national service opportunities in this country. As general counsel for Be the Change, a new organization founded by Alan Khazei, I am helping to lead a campaign for universal national service which by the close of 2009, seeks to give every young person the opportunity to serve for a year.
I have long been told that it is nearly impossible to plan out your career in advance, and that its path will largely be influenced by people and opportunities along the way. If this is true, then there is no greater entrance onto that path than through the Dutko Fellowship.
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