A New Perspective: Chrysalis Enterprises

“A hand-up as opposed to a hand-out.”
- Mark Loranger, President & CEO of Chrysalis

I look forward to working with an organization that supports people as they help themselves. Chrysalis is not an organization that provides clients with a one time $200 gift card to Ralph’s and expects the clients to do the rest. Chrysalis is an organization that understands the difficulties their clients face living in poverty and getting/maintaining a job, and fundamentally changes the person forever who sticks with the program. Chrysalis Enterprises gets clients back on their feet.

My previous volunteer work included tutoring students living in low-income housing in the Conejo Valley, but the situation of those residents did not seem as dire as that of those living on Skid Row. Despite my thousands of hours of volunteer work over the years, this is the most involved I will be in the day-to-day operations of an organization that has a mission in which I strongly believe. So, why now?

When starting business school, I was confident that my career after would be with some type of nonprofit organization/social enterprise. A few months into my first year, though, surrounded by students who aspire to work for all of the big corporations I had heard of but never thought of working for, I started having second thoughts. I wondered if it would be better for me to go into the private sector immediately following graduation and then after that experience begin working for a nonprofit organization. My previous career was in city government (the public sector), so I do not have any experience in the private sector. I hope to learn a lot about myself and how I want to spend my years after business school through my time with Chrysalis Enterprises.

My responsibilities with the organization are not as clear cut as some of those of my classmates working for large, private corporations. I look forward to the opportunity to grow in many ways, leaving my comfort zone and immersing myself in areas in which I am less familiar. Leaving my comfort zone seems less intimidating when I am doing it for an organization for which I am passionate.

I want to leave you with a brief video about Chrysalis. In explaining the organization I will dedicate 9 weeks of my life to this summer, I found that the following video captured not only what Chrysalis is and does, but the energy with which they do it.

Posted by Molly