Amanda Pittman realized pretty quickly that if she was going to spend 40 — or sometimes much more —hours of her week at work, she’d need to find a job she was truly passionate about. Since her favorite things (dogs, kids and beer) didn’t seem to fit in the same job description (yet!), she instead found herself landing a position at a nonprofit tasked with improving teen literacy through poetry and spoken word.
Though she didn’t have nonprofit experience, as operations and finance manager of Get Lit | Words Ignite, Amanda relishes applying her for-profit skills while working toward a greater good. “I can see the effects we’re having on kids lives on a daily basis,” she says. “Every day, I get to look around my office and see how the work we’re doing directly impacts those statistics and completely wipes them out.” For Amanda, the types of days that have her jumping from number crunching to organizing poetry slams are just what she needed to break through the corporate America doldrums. And while she’s still got the idea for a dogs-welcome, craft beer bar floating in the back of her mind, Amanda is pretty confident she’s found her true passion at Get Lit.