My AmeriCorps Road

When I look at my career it’s like looking at a map with a winding mountain road. There were a lot of changes that I never expected, a lot of ups and downs, and I still never quite know what is around the next bend. When I graduated high school I thought my career was going to be in radio. I love music and throughout high school I had a lot of opportunities to learn how to make things sound good. So as a bright eyed eighteen year old who thought he knew exactly how things were going to pan out I started my journey down the road.

Turns out I was wrong about knowing exactly how things were going to go and the road definitely wasn’t straight forward. I made the first bend when I realized that working with video was a whole lot more fun than just audio, and I was pretty good at it. It was then I knew my future was in video production. So I found a job working in reality tv as the person who gets all the video ready for the editors. Sure it wasn’t as creative as I thought it would be, but I was getting to grow my skills and was at a company I thought I would be at for the rest of my career. The road I was on was straight forward, or so I thought.

I didn’t end up staying at that production company for the rest of my career. I wanted to grow my skills and show that I could do more than just edit video, I wanted to be creative and have more adventure, so I made the move to working in news. I took what I had learned with audio, how editing worked, and went into working on news broadcasts. The product you see at 5:00 PM every night is so much more than two talking heads reading headlines and introducing stories. There’s reporters, producers, camera operators, audio techs, technical directors, and many other people making it all come together. I had to be adaptable and after starting on the audio board, I worked my way up to directing newscasts within a year. Finally I’d found the path that the road followed. This was a road with adventure, creativity and a future.

The future didn’t last that long. The road took another turn and led me to Reno. Now if you would have asked an 18 year old me if I was going to end up in Reno you would have gotten a blank stare. I was so confident that when I left for college I wouldn’t be back in Nevada, but this road had different plans and at 24 I was back. Still in news, still further along than I had started, but back nevertheless. I thought maybe the road was going to straighten out again but the biggest turn was coming up faster than I could have ever imagined.

The road was rough when it started coming through Reno. I wasn’t happy with my career, I was feeling stuck and even though the road looked straight it was full of potholes and not fun to be on anymore. I made another turn and took a chance on joining Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. This was by far the biggest turn I had made on my journey and it was a turn into a complete unknown. To my surprise, the road stopped being so rough. I saw opportunities that hadn’t been presented to me since I was in college and found the adventure I was looking for in service to my community. In the year that I served, I was able to use all the skills that I had been gaining and refining along this road to truly make a difference and get things done.

The unfortunate thing about doing a year of service is knowing that it’s only a year. You know when the road is going to turn again, but you don’t want it to. Luckily I was able to use my time as an AmeriCorps member to continue my career in service working with another nonprofit in Reno. I always told myself that if the Parks Foundation came calling I’d turn right around and come back in a heartbeat, and once again to my surprise, it did. 

I’ve been with Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation nearly five years now, six if you count my time as a VISTA member. It’s a place that has challenged me creatively, tested my skills in ways that I couldn’t even imagine, and taken my adaptability to new heights. All of the skills that I learned starting in high school and through all those career changes came together in my experience as an AmeriCorps member. My road was always meant to bring me to national service, I had no idea in the moment but looking back and reflecting on where I've been, this road was leading here the whole time. 

Nobody really knows the road ahead of them, but I’m grateful that mine took me here, and I hope this time the road stays straight for a while.

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About the Author:

Matt is the Communications Manager for Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation. After serving with TMPF as an AmeriCorps VISTA in 2017 he worked to promote AmeriCorps programs throughout Nevada for four years and is excited to be back at the place that started his journey in the nonprofit world. Matt studied Radio Television Production at the University of Montana and brings over a decade of experience to the TMPF communications team. When he isn't working you can find Matt watching baseball, hiking with his family, or being pulled behind a boat.