My name is John Frankford and I am currently a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh in the college of Business and Administration. I was born and raised in Lower Paxton Township, a suburb in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My dad’s side of the family has lived there for some time, growing up and attending Central Dauphin High School as far back as my grandfather.
My sister and I were raised in a competitive household, and that led me to try a variety of sports in my time growing up, including soccer, football, basketball, and baseball. It was not until my freshman year of high school that I found my true passion upon joining the volleyball team. This passion soon turned into a year-round relationship, playing for both Central Dauphin High and Yorktowne Volleyball Club. It was during my junior year that I had the privilege to be the setter on an extremely talented team that made it to the PIAA State Semi-finals before ultimately being knocked out by Pittsburgh’s very own North Alleghany. Despite coming up just shy of our goal, the memories, relationships, and lessons I learned during that season, will stick with me for life.
When the time finally came to start thinking about college, I was initially unsure about where I wanted to attend and only ended up applying to three schools. These included Penn State, Pitt, and the University of Virginia. Despite UVA being a bit of a reach school, I was nonetheless upset with the subsequent rejection. Although my dad is a PSU alumni, I was turned off by the school because of how many students from my high school ultimately attended there. Whether by process of elimination, or the excellent experience I had when I came to visit, I soon submitted my down payment to the University of Pittsburgh and eagerly awaited the start of the next chapter of my life.
Thus far, I can confidently say I made the right decision by attending the University of Pittsburgh. Not only has the business school been all I hoped for, but I have come to really love the integration of the campus into Oakland, and the endless possibilities that the city of Pittsburgh itself has to offer. In my three semesters so far, I am proud to say I have been on the Dean’s List for each, and also earned the board position of Business Manager on the Men’s Club Volleyball team. Through the various trials I have experienced, I have learned time-management, responsibility, teamwork, and most of all, hard work, while watching myself continually develop as a leader in and out of the classroom.
Armed with these skills, I recently accepted my first internship at D&H Distributing as an intern in the Vendor Management department. This is a prospect I am ecstatic about, as I see it as another great opportunity to apply what I have been learning in the classroom to the real world, while continuing to gain valuable knowledge, and discover my potential passions in the workforce.
This semester, I will travel to Puerto Rico over spring break to work with a local laboratory known as Caras Con Causa in an effort to help restore a local mangrove population. While this is one of the broad strokes of Pitt’s ten-year commitment to Caras, my team and I will specifically be gathering data in order to create a strategic marketing initiative to help Caras attract valuable researchers to engage with the unique environmental setting to advance the social and educational prerogatives throughout Puerto Rico. By doing so, we will help Caras take another essential step towards financial sustainability.
The Service-Learning class was attractive to me personally for a multitude of reasons. For starters, it was relatively early on in my CBA career that I began to feel like I was not having the chance to apply the knowledge and skills I spent so many hours learning about in the classroom. Upon enrolling in the Certificate Program of Leadership and Ethics, I got a small taste of experiential learning while working on a consulting project for the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation, and soon realized that deeper level of connection and engagement to the material was something I needed to continue to foster. I truly believe that the hands-on opportunities provide the best learning environments and experiences.
Professionally, I hope my experiences throughout the semester and the following trip will leave me with many stories and examples I can later refer to in job interviews. Furthermore, this is an opportunity to once more try my hand at nonprofit consulting and see if it could be a future career I would be interested in. Finally, being engaged in a semester long project will help to continue to foster my teamwork, communication, and leadership as we work towards our ultimate goal.
Personally, I view this course and subsequent trip as a chance to be apart of a meaningful and lasting impact towards the betterment of a community that needs our help. I must admit, until recently I was somewhat ignorant of the true levels of devastation brought about by Hurricane Maria. It was not until I took the time to read the articles and listen to these people’s stories that I really began to have some true perspective on the ruin it wrought. While our group this semester may be just one small chapter in a ten-year story, in the big picture, the restoration of the native mangrove population would provide a buffer from future flooding caused by hurricanes and tropical storms. Furthermore, the ultimate success of the lab would coincide with the success of the surrounding community. At Caras, community engagement is one of the primary driving forces in all decisions, and they truly hope the lab will be able to provide a source of revenue to the community, education and knowledge to its citizens, and finally a sense of pride to its people. Just being able to know I played a small role in impacting the lives of so many is the greatest opportunity I could ask for, a source of pride, and provides all the motivation one could need to see this project through.