Aleika Sepulveda: Paying it forward
Aleika Sepulveda’s journey with Urban Upbound started when her friend, Felipe Ayala, was leaving the organization. Felipe was looking for his replacement as a Career Counselor at our East Harlem location.
Fast forward 1.5 years, Aleika is now our Retention Specialist. She manages the program retention of 2,000 Jobs-Plus members and helps us connect with them to maintain their engagement — making sure they feel comfortable coming back to the organization, especially if their previous efforts did not lead to a satisfactory result.
The Retention Specialist is a very important position, especially to make sure that our members come back to us and let us help them with employment retention and financial management — because getting a job is only the first step toward economic independence. Various challenges and unsatisfactory conditions at work can lead to members falling back into unemployment — and often these members won’t come back to us for the second time. Aleika is the one who reaches out to them by any means necessary — emails,calls, social media, and text. For the members who are working, she helps make sure that they get their rewards when they achieve a certain retention target and, once a year, organizes a member appreciation event to acknowledge members’ achievements. She also helps some members who want to go back to school — helping them with their campus search and applications.
Her favorite thing about working at Urban Upbound is when she gets to give members the rewards that they deserve for achieving their retention goals, “It could be a $50 gift card or a one-week metrocard. Sometimes a lot of them need it — they get very happy.”
Her work resulted in a huge improvement in our ability to capture employment verification from our employed members. She increased her retention outcomes and surpassed the retention milestones of last year. She continues to think of strategic, innovative ways to keep our members strongly engaged in Urban Upbound services, even after they have been placed in a job.
For Aleika, Urban Upbound is not merely a place where she works, “I love the environment here, especially once the members get to know you and feel comfortable coming to the office to see who they need to see.” A sense of community is important to her, “[the members] know that it’s an open door policy — we’re not far from the community and everybody knows who we are. I like that.” Through her work at Urban Upbound, she hopes to live by her motto — pay it forward.
