Interview with Tara by Jénine Jaakou
Educator, consultant and mother at a distance Tara Phillips has been appointed as CSR’s newest manager. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, the fifty three year old manager officially started her newest position with Corporate Social Responsibility in November, but had a slower start due to traveling back and forth to her hometown in the States.
Before moving to France’s capital in 2018, Tara did an executive master’s program at HEC Paris in 2015. “I was traveling back and forth from Brooklyn because I was running a school back then. After finishing the program, I decided that this was the next place where I wanted to live.” Her original plan was to bring her son along with her overseas, but plans changed. “He was finishing middle school and I knew he wanted to become a chef so I thought ‘Paris is the place to be!’, but he ended up living with his father in California. I ended up on my own in Paris, which was unexpected at first, but it turned out to be amazing,” she smiles. “I had this fantasy of living in the greatest city of the world in my twenties and it came true.”
Her career has always been rooted in non-profits and service, mostly in education. And she’s not the only one in her family dedicating to serving others. “My son just graduated culinary school to become a chef. He’s working for a non-profit organization in New York City making medically specialized meals for people with HIV. We’re a family of service,” she laughs.
Prior to the CSR position, Tara had been an executive director for a non-profit organisation and finished that occupation in February. From then on she has been doing consulting, working with organisational strategic planning and fundraising. “I’ve also been doing some writing for clients, because I’m also a writer. But during my current work, I was wondering what the next stage would be in my life. I guess the universe answered.”
A crazy string of events…
And boy did the universe answer. According to Tara Phillips, a mind-blowing and bizarre set of coincidences led her to her position with CSR and Serve The City Paris. Besides working with multiple NGO’s, being an executive director, consulting and writing, Phillips also enjoys doing amateur theatre. “I was performing in this show and I met a group of people who were doing stand-up on the weekends at a bar not far from La Bastille. I went to see their stand-up, and I was sitting next to Kevin James, who had been a partner to Serve The City.”
As they met up for coffee not long after the show, Serve The City got brought up again in their conversation. “The ironic thing about us talking about STCP was that another friend of mine had sent me a job description for a position with Serve The City Paris. I was doubting it a little bit at first, but when I talked to Kevin, he mentioned the organisation again and I thought ‘alright, maybe I need to give it a shot’.” She ended up at an event where she met Julie, Safi and the rest of the STCP team, where they mentioned the CSR position to her. “It was a really weird string of events because it took me to be at a show to meet these people for me to actually be here.”
But there’s more. “The crazier thing is that the show close to La Bastille was hosted by a guy I went to high school with, who I haven’t seen in almost thirty years,” she chuckles. “He just happened to be in Paris inviting me to this comedy show he was directing. So it was literally some guy I went to high school with decades ago who opened up this crazy path for me.”
Upcoming plans for CSR
Starting her position as manager of CSR and working alongside STCP, Tara has already interesting plans she wants to approach and dig into. “What I find interesting is that we have corporate partners and we have schools, universities and partners that work with students. I think that there’s a distinction between them that needs to be made.” She believes, in her own experience as an educator, that students aren’t really engaging in corporate social responsibilities. Corporate socials’ responsibilities are things like generating profit who should be thinking about their impact on society and what they can give to others. But for students, she thinks it’s a different goal. “I believe their goals are about cultivating a community of people who serve. How do we work with student groups to build a culture of service in them as they continue to become adults?” she asks. “Because when you’re in college you’re focused on your degree and then you graduate and get a job, and sometimes you forget the importance of service. That’s something I’d like to dig in further because I’m an educator at heart; I’ve always worked with young people.”
Tara finds it very exciting to be part of a team again with the new organisations. “When you’re a consultant, I was just by myself doing the work. And so, it is really gratifying to be a part of a team, collaborating with other people, seeing how they work and what it’s all about.” Because of all the experiences she has with running non-profit organisations, it had her thinking a lot about the compacity of the work and the potential of other types of partnerships in service. “There are a lot of great conversations to be held and I just hope I can contribute the skillset and the experiences that I have.”
