Volunteer of the Week: Aidan Foley

Submitted by Dawn Nowatzki – SJN Board Member, and SJN Southeast Program Director

Aidan Foley has been a key volunteer contributor to the post-launch and continued success of SJN Southeast.

Aidan originally joined SJN in November 2006, then landed at Orbital Sciences and moved to alumni status, and returned to SJN as an active job seeker in June 2009.

For those of you who attended an SJN Southeast event over the summer, when Eric Walton was our presenter, you know that Eric assigned “homework” to-dos for everyone to work on in preparation for the next meeting. The first to-do, from the “Emotions” session, was to journal where you were with each of the 10 emotions listed on the Emotional Roller Coaster.

In the earliest SJN Southeast meetings, we had quite a few new members joining us at each meeting, and I would remind everyone before the next session what the homework to-do was, so that first-timers would be prepared.

My introduction to Aidan was his email response to me, the day after receiving this reminder, as follows:

“Hi Dawn, concerning the action item, I did a self assessment (my wife helped too), and I've only seen Denial that my last employer could let me go with so much on my plate, Apprehension in that have I done everything possible to prep for my interview, Accepting that this 'stuff' happens, and Growth that I'm able to offer comfort and humor to others going thru this transition as well as me....”

Since our SJN Southeast group was still very new, and everyone was still getting to know each other, Eric and I asked Aidan at that second meeting if he would mind sharing his response with the group, and he immediately agreed. He was an icebreaker for the other SJN members, and encouraged them to also share their situations.

Before the next meeting, Aidan offered to be an SJN volunteer. When I asked him what he would like to do, he replied that he would do whatever we needed help with, that he typically never got to pick and choose his assignments, and that it seemed that he always got the ones that were in distress and needed a “smokejumper” mentality to solve.

Aidan offered to coordinate with Jerry Holtzclaw and Meridith Sullivan, and he led the creation and roll-out of the Specialty Support Groups (SSGs) in SJN Southeast in early August, and has been the SSG coordinator since then for SJN Southeast.

He also recognized the importance of re-offering the Get Wired to Get Hired workshop and LinkedIn demo at SJN Southeast, and since he was very familiar with LinkedIn, offered to be involved in the hands-on LinkedIn demo presentation that we provided in November.

Aidan was also a Wandering Greeter at all events, and made a point of making sure that no one was sitting alone at a table from the time that they arrived – including Laurie Katapski, the SJN North Site Event Coordinator, who I had invited to sit in and observe an SJN Southeast event!

Beyond that, I could tell that Aidan was always thinking about SJN and its needs as he was going through his daily and weekly job search and networking:

• He would advise as he identified several potential locations for SJN meetings and computer labs.
• At my request, Aidan sought out SJN members with examples of experiences with Maricopa and Phoenix Workforce Connection in advance of an SJN meeting with them to explore opportunities for SJN members.
• He made a valiant effort in trying to convince a retired Lt. Col from another Southeast Valley networking group to drive down to an SJN Southeast event to take digital photos of SJN members for their LinkedIn profiles.
• Aidan was an SJN ambassador as he attended other networking groups, and he referred many first-timers to SJN events both in the North and Southeast, and encouraged them to also volunteer.
• And he followed up with me multiple times after SJN Southeast meetings when he heard about potential opportunities that might be a fit for an SJN member that he had talked to at a previous meeting, but didn’t quite remember who they were.

On Monday, December 7th, Aidan will be transitioning back into SJN Alumni status as he starts at Honeywell Aerospace, through Manpower, as a Senior Advanced Engineer.

I am very grateful for the volunteer contributions and ongoing support that Aidan has provided to me and to SJN Southeast, we will miss him at our upcoming meetings, and we wish him the best in his new opportunity. afoley1@cox.net