Et cetera : AmeriCorps NCCC Class 18 Team Leader Spotlight: Emily Ostroff

Emily Ostroff

Name: Emily Ostroff

Hometown: Dedham, Massachusetts

Emily is the Class 18 Team Leader for Fire Team Maple 4 at the NCCC campus. This is her third year of service in AmeriCorps. She previously served two years at City Year Boston, her first year as a Corps Member and a second year as the Team Leader on the Civic Engagement team. In City Year, she worked to design, implement and lead volunteer service days with local agencies and non-profits and helped translate the needs of community facilities into one-day physical service projects.

Emily chose to serve three terms with AmeriCorps for a whole host of reasons, from the chance to do something she feels is profoundly useful for the citizens of this country and to learning her own skills and passions through service opportunities. Emily is excited this year to be sharing the power of service with her NCCC team.

Emily describes herself as someone with pretty good people skills. She loves talking to people; finding out what they love or what excites them and helping them find a way to get what they need to get going. Emily has been told that she has a knack for seeing things from both the most micro and most macro perspectives. Other skills Emily brings to NCCC are being a decent writer and photographer and as well as a self-taught filmmaker and mural designer. Emily has a penchant for figuring out how to build and fix things, which has led her to dabble in carpentry and construction, which in turn has taken her in some fun, weird directions, like amateur boatbuilding.

Some unique experiences that Emily would like to share about herself are traveling around the world with Semester at Sea, zigzagging across the US by train, making (sort of) funny videos about my City Year teams, teaching Cameron Diaz how to build a raised planter bed and riding a trash truck on a beach every day for a month.

After finishing her NCCC Team Leader year she honestly does not know yet what she plans to do. She has no doubt though that it will involve continuing to serve in some way. She’s hoping to take some time to document in her own way some of the amazing work that's happening in both the public and non-profit sectors, and have considered careers in related fields from non-profit consulting to urban planning. Then again, she might just take up carpentry.

Emily graduated from Dana Hall School in 2004 and Earlham College in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Geosciences and a minor Economics.

Some fun facts about Emily:

Q: What was your first job? Hidden Valley Camp in Freedom, Maine

Q: What is your favorite movie? “While You Were Sleeping”

Q: What will be your first words of advice for your team members? “You can do this.”

Q: What is one place in the world that you really, really wish you could visit? Antarctica

Q: What is your favorite candy? Reese’s

Q: What do you like to do in your free time? build stuff

Q: Could you give us one reason to join AmeriCorps NCCC? It prepares you to do a lot of different things and respond to many types of situations.