Alexis served as a corps member in 09-10. Here she is working at one of CYCHI's large scale service days helping beautify a local community organization. Alexis Sanchez is serving her second year at CYCHI. She is the Leadership Development Project Leader.

Sanchez was a corps member last year on the Diploma’s Now team serving at Chicago Talent Development Charter High School. It was the first for the school and it was the first year for City Year’s partnership with Talent Development and Communities in Schools.

“Half way through the year our team introduced the coordinator roles and I was the Attendance Coordinator so I was responsible for our VIP Lounge and coming up with new initiatives for good attendance,” Sanchez said.

The trainings Sanchez received as a corps member in a pilot school last year are helping her with her position now, as she provides training and guidance for the new corps who are all working with the coordinator roles this year.

“My team piloted almost all of what is happening now in terms of our service model so I certainly provide some support in that I’ve done it before and can tell you what’s like,” Sanchez said. “For instance, morning greeting is something that corps members do in the morning for our students and not all of the students are going to express as much excitement as you. I’ve seen that and I can tell corps members how to handle that and understand that students think some things are cheesy just because they didn’t want to express that they liked it.”

As the Leadership Development Project Leader, Alexis said she’ll provide more perspective as to what is realistic to expect from students and corps members.  She works closely with the Whole School, Whole Child Project Leader, Katherine Liao, and Kelly Witt, Training Manager, here at City Year Chicago to further develop projects for school-based teams and cultivates various components of the Whole School, Whole Child service model.

“The metaphor we use on the team is Katherine and Kelly carry an idea for 10 miles and they exhaust all of their resources and then they pass it on to me and I carry for next 10 miles,” Sanchez said. “So, by the end, we’ve sort of stretched and strengthened this idea or project until we feel it is ready to deliver to the corps.”

Alexis is also the Leadership After City Year (LACY) point person at CYCHI. She had her first event last week, an undergraduate/graduate school fair and workshop session. Featured at the event were “give a year Partners“  Illinois Institute of Technology and Brandeis University.

The work Alexis does is often times behind the scene, but that’s how she likes it. In fact, her motivation for continuing on at City Year Chicago is directly tied to a humble idea of service.

“I try my best and even though what I do is minute in the grand scale of things, I know that what I’m contributing to the overarching goal of City Year ,” Sanchez said. “And I’m happy with that.”