Internship Blog - Alyssa Cypher, Post #1

Hello everyone! I’m excited to be blogging for GSPIA Career Services this summer, since it will be a great way to document and share my adventures and experiences. First, I should start off with a little (or a lot) about myself. My name is Alyssa Cypher, and I’m originally from the Pittsburgh area. I graduated with a BS in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh last spring, and now I am pursuing the MPA in Policy Research and Analysis with a certificate in Eastern European Studies. Last year I was on a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship through the US Department of Education to study Advanced Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Some fun facts about me unrelated to school: I am a yoga instructor. I also love rock climbing and fencing. I have a pit bull named Esra. I am a homeowner in the neighborhood of Lower Lawrenceville. I love growing, cooking, and consuming food. In my spare time, when I’m not working out in some form, I enjoy going to dive bars, dancing in my house alone to music, and binge watching TV series and terrible horror movies on Netflix.

My summer will be three-fourths Pittsburgh, one-fourth Podgorica. For most of the summer I will be interning for Amizade Global Service-Learning at The Global Switchboard (I will tell you more about this exciting project later in this post). Then mid-July I will hop on a plane and travel to Podgorica, Montenegro to study at the University of Montenegro’s Institute of Foreign Languages. There I will take four weeks of intensive advanced Serbian. (Also, I’m super excited that both myself and Allie will be blogging about/from the Balkans this summer!)

Now, what exactly is The Global Switchboard, and what have I been doing there? The Global Switchboard is a co-working space for globally minded organizations that recently opened in May of this year. Amizade Global Service-Learning powers The Global Switchboard, while Global Solutions Pittsburgh acts as the anchor. Besides these two organizations there are currently seven other members - a mix of nonprofits, for-profits, NGOs, and individual consultants. The Global Switchboard acts as a bridge between Pittsburgh and the globe; it also acts as a catalyst for engagement among our members, taking the input of every group and amplifying the collective output, to increase and strengthen what the members can accomplish both locally and globally. (If you’re still confused, there’s more information on our website - http://theglobalswitchboard.org/ or watch our Youtube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuFDX9RlQc). As for my job specifically, my daily projects can range from operations to event planning to research to social media management to advertising to orchid care and landscaping to member programming development and implementation. As we say in the office, everyone wears “many hats,” so it can be hard to describe what we do in a single job title. Overall, I love working here. Being a part of The Global Switchboard, complete with dealing with the growing pains and endless trials of a new nonprofit project, is an amazing learning experience, and I cannot wait to see what we will accomplish this summer. Until next time!

Amizade Global Service-Learning and Global Solutions Pittsburgh (GSP) staff exploring Lawrenceville (L to R - Daniel Giovannelli (GSP), Laura Amster (GSP), myself, and Nathan Darity (Amizade)).

The entrance to the Global Switchboard