In the era of digital plentitude today, social media is a pivotal platform in attracting followers, building awareness, and publicizing aspirations for a nonprofit like Givology. Behind Givology’s social media is the team’s co-director, Alex Yu. For the past three years, Yu has been a vital member of the team: his responsibilities now include facilitating weekly social media calls to crafting daily posts on Givology’s largest social media page on Facebook that reaches up to hundreds of followers.
Currently finishing up his junior year in Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Yu first encountered Givology at an internship fair in his school during his freshman year. Yu joined the team because he saw merit to Givology’s 100% volunteer model and the flexible, remote working environment.
In addition, being raised in an affluent community with a multitude of rich education opportunities, ever since learning that this is not the case for countless youth around the globe, Yu stood strongly with Givology’s core mission to cause tangible changes in the education of the underprivileged students. “Education is unfortunately a privilege for students around the world when it should be a right,” he said.
Since then, Yu has been constantly inspired by the passionate energy of the team. “Everyone at Givology is involved and genuinely cares about the work they do, and we all share that common interest,” he noted.
Givology’s Chief Talent Officer Neil Kothari recounted his collaboration with Yu when recruiting for the summer internship program at their high school. “He did an exceptional job with articulating Givology's mission and summer internship program and fielded many questions from potential applicants,” Kothari said.
Yu has come to appreciate Givology’s collaborative spirit even as most of the work is done remotely. “Because we all work remotely, our weekly conference calls require lots of input from volunteers and it is engaging work and interesting to learn about all the different perspectives and ongoing projects people on the team are doing,” he said. In particular, he enjoyed the Back to School Campaign at the start of this school year as well as the Week of Giving over the past Thanksgiving break. “We really got people's attention and were able to make lots of contributions and reach out,” he recalled.
When he is not brainstorming ideas for the coming week’s post, Yu can often be found solving 3 x 3 Rubik’s cube in 12 seconds or playing basketball for his school. Kothari described Yu as an “incredibly hard-working” and “pragmatic yet understanding” friend. Neeyanth Kopparapu, a junior at TJHSST, agreed to Kothari. “He's a very nice and hardworking person,” said Kopparapu. “We did a lot of projects together in middle school because we had like a lot of classes together at that point and he had like a lot of creative ideas,” he added.