Penn staff make the Philadelphia area a better place through side gigs

Since 2019, Penn Today has periodically profiled the volunteering, fundraising, and community work that faculty, staff, and students do outside their job description, in Philadelphia and around the globe.This is the 12th installment in the Side Gigs for Good series, featuring a Stuart Weitzman School of Design research grants manager who mentors and empowers Latino business professionals, a department director in the School of Nursing who leads three Girl Scout troops, a Penn Center for Innovation administrative coordinator who donates her hand-knitted items to people in need, and an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences who connects Philadelphia children to music opportunities. Since 2018, DeJesus has been working at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design as director of the Research Support Center, which is responsible for managing all research grants and contracts. After graduating from high school, Jessica DeJesus landed a position in the accounting office of Mellon Bank, hired by a woman from Argentina. DeJesus has been paying it forward ever since. On a recent Monday afternoon, Mary Kinney headed to the Netter Center for Community Partnerships for what has now become an annual holiday tradition: donating items she has knitted throughout the year. This year, that included a dozen pairs of mittens, 11 hats, four sweaters, and one poncho. Kinney, an administrative coordinator at the Penn Center for Innovation, says she has been knitting since about age four, having been raised in a family with a “do-it-yourself” sort of attitude.

To read the full article, click here.