Community Fellows Experience Led to Philanthropy Career For Marilyn Perez-Mendoza MA’20

When Marilyn Perez-Mendoza MA’20 finished her bachelor’s degree at UCLA, she didn’t plan on a career as a fundraiser. Today she is Associate Deputy Director of Philanthropy for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Southern California, supervising a team raising money to support the nonprofit organization’s work defending individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Perez-Mendoza credits the experience she gained in Lehigh’s Community Fellows program with preparing her for a philanthropy career. 

As an undergraduate, Perez-Mendoza was active with UCLA’s Pediatric AIDS Coalition. The experience informed her interest in health equity issues, which she would continue to pursue while a graduate student at Lehigh and in the Community Fellows Program. She learned about the program when she moved to the Lehigh Valley after graduation to work for the International Hyperhidrosis Society, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization. The program’s emphasis on hands-on experience and the fact that she could continue working drew her to apply. 

“Being able to not have a gap on my resume while I was getting my education was really important,” Perez-Mendoza says. “When you work in the nonprofit space, every year of experience matters. Being able to have that work experience while continuing to support myself was a priority.”

While pursuing her master’s degree in political science, she worked as a Fellow for St. Luke’s University Hospital and the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley. Working with Rajika Reed, St. Luke’s vice president for community health, Perez-Mendoza expanded her interest in health equity. She compiled data for the hospital’s Community Needs Health Assessment report which identifies health-care needs in the community and how the hospital addresses them. 

But it was her work at the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley that introduced a new career direction. “The grant-writing, development, and fundraising experience that I gained at Hispanic Center was something that I didn’t know I needed and that I grew to love,” she says. “That’s what led to my current career trajectory. The reason I have the job I have now is because of my fellowship experience there.”

Gaining career insights is one of the great benefits of the Fellows program, she says. “If you’re really intentional with the Fellows program, you can gain experience in the career you want. It’s also a good place to explore if you’re not sure what your interests are.”

Perez-Mendoza says the research and writing skills acquired in her Lehigh graduate courses are used every day in her work for the ACLU. “I left feeling confident in my ability to translate complex concepts into digestible, reader-friendly messages,” she says. “So much of my job involves taking 50-page legal memos…and writing about them in language a layperson will understand is something I do in my job every day.”