My transition and my gratitude
Hello friends —
After an incredible 10 years, this week will be my last working full-time on national service and at Service Year Alliance.
You’re getting this email because you have played some role during this time and I will never forget it. Truly. We are each capable of little but for the belief, honesty, generosity, and commitment of those around us. I’ve been absurdly lucky to meet so many incredible people over the years and I’m immensely grateful.
For relatively uninspired reasons 15 years ago, I moved from Pittsburgh to Boston for a service year. The year unexpectedly changed my life, instilling in me a sense of what young people can accomplish and how different our country would be if that experience became the common experience. I believe that now more than I did then.
Reflecting on the last 10 years, I’m especially proud of six things:
- The incredibly talented teams that we’ve been able to assemble over the years
- These teams not shying away from the hard battles and bold ideas required to build this movement — and maintaining the persistence to succeed
- The political and advocacy movement we’re building that reaching our vision requires
- Incredible partners in the service field and beyond including companies, funders, and passionate leaders
- The rare decision to merge three organizations to form the one we have today
- And of course, the service year opportunities we’ve helped protect and grow, and the young people we’ve helped inspire to serve
Far more than pride, however, is the gratitude I feel for all that you did to make this possible.
I want to close with two requests, one that’s obvious and one that’s less so (and since I’ve been asking for things for 10 years, why stop now):
First, I hope you will continue to do everything you can for Service Year Alliance and the service year movement. Our nation is desperate for ideas that can bring people together from all backgrounds in common cause. There’s a lot of talk about how to win political campaigns and how to win legislative victories. But there’s a third subject largely missing from the public discourse right now: how will we create a thriving sense of citizenship that is the foundation for everything communities and democracy require?
One that actually connects people of different backgrounds, that asks something of people to help solve our shared challenges, that builds leaders among each generation, and equips young people with the grit, problem solving, and empathy that we need in our citizenry. For all of those reasons, a service year must become the defining institution and experience of the 21st century.
Second, of the ten years I’ve been at this, the first five were as a start-up entrepreneur. Starting an organization to advocate for national service wasn’t my plan, but there was an unmet need and so we jumped in. It was an incredible adventure that helped push the service year movement forward in some big ways.
However, our start-up experience was made possible in large part because we came from a relative place of privilege. We had good degrees, supportive families, early access to funders, and connections to leaders who supported us from the start. Yes, we had to be persistent and grind it out every day, but we were very fortunate to have early believers and mentors that so many young people with equally good ideas don’t have access to.
Entrepreneurship is one of the absolute greatest things we humans can ever experience. And the ability for our world to advance requires entrepreneurs who have perspectives and experiences from all corners and communities of our society. My request is that today, next week, or sometime soon, you’ll make the time, in ways big or small, to support a young entrepreneur, especially one who has less access to resources and mentors.
As for me, and what’s next, I’m not sure. We’ve spent the last two years in San Francisco and I will be looking for my next adventure in the Bay Area. Regardless of what I do, the service year movement is a lifelong pursuit for me and I’m eager to continue helping in all ways possible. Moving forward I can be reached at zsmaurin at gmail dot com.
Again, a big thanks to you, to our entire team, led by Shirley Sagawa our CEO, and to our board, led by Stan McChrystal, for all you’ve done and will do for this movement.
With gratitude, and see you out there,
zach
