2015 Class Schedule

Hope 2014 – 15 Class Tentative Agenda
Friday Class: 7:50am to 9am
Room 120

September 12 – 1st class orientation to Stephen Cronin’s Hope’s Life Skills Program.
September 17 & 18BIF Forum: opportunity for Hope Life Skills students to listen to and meet eminent story tellers from all over the world during this 2 day forum at the Trinity Theatre in Providence. BIF also presents an opportunity for students to start exercising their new networking skills and begin building their own personal network
September 19 – Today’s guests are former Hope High ‘Life Skills’ students speaking about their experience in our Hope ‘Life Skills’ program: Jason Roias (‘14), Jean Rodriguez (’14), Kathleen Bonne Annee (’15), Betsy Olea (’15), Daniel Labang (’15). Multiple Hope High ‘Life Skills class students were hosts to introduce each of our guests to the class.  And, 1st homework assignment: fact vs opinion; appreciating the presence of bias in the data we encounter and how best to ensure the truth.
October 3 – Today’s Guest: Theresa Moore, businesswoman, entrepreneur, social activist, collegiate athlete, Harvard graduate, and very nice person! Theresa has worked for Coke Cola, ESPN, and recently started her own company. Hope High Life Skills Host of the day is Chevell Burgess. Today’s assignment: Fact and opinion Part TWO.
October 10 – Today’s guest: Policewoman Genna Rock from the East Providence Police Department, former undercover officer. Genna’s career story is a fascinating story of risk management. Hope Life Skills Host of this day is Aileen Rodriguez Jimenez!
October 17 – Today’s guest: Marta Aparicio. Marta will share her inspiring story of perseverance and overcoming adversity from her childhood in Guatemala to meeting her parents for the 1st time at 13 years old in America, her education at Hope High School in Providence to her collegiate experience and graduation from Georgetown University and her present job at Follette. Hope High Life Skills host of this day is Olimpia.
October 24 – Today’s guest: Adriana Dawson. Director of Employer Outreach & Engagement at Roger Williams University. Adriana’s story is one of learning from one’s mistakes to become a stronger and wiser person. Hope High Life Skills Host of this day is Cecelia.
October 31 – today’s guest: Wendy Lewis, story teller, artist, martial artist, and risk taker who continually pushes herself out of her comfort zone . Wendy is a copywriter at CVS in Woonsocket. She is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.  Jessica was our class host today welcoming Wendy and introducing her to her classmates.
November 7 – Today’s guest: Carlos Sanchez. Son of Cuban immigrants, former radio sports anchor, now CVS/pharmacy Senior Director Advertising Production. Carlos brings several associates from CVS Health, a $123,000,000,000 (billion) company from Woonsocket, RI. Also in attendance from CVS will be Fred Felix, Senior Manager Strategic Procurement, Michelle Nguyen, Senior Director, Inventory Management, and Cassandra Castro, Lead Coordinator, Regulatory Compliance. Hope High Life Skills host of this class is
November 14 – Today’s guest: Lusine Corsini. Lusine works for the Boston technology company, Akami Technologies. Lucine’s family came to America from Russia. Lusine was an Industrial Design major and took jewelry classes as an elective at RISD. She has made her own jewelry. Lusine’s multifaceted personal story is filled with overcoming adversity, perseverance, trusting your own instincts, and the universal benefits of creative thinking. Hope High Life Skills host is
November 21 – Today’s guest: Rodrigo Zetina-Yglesia is the Director of Operations at a company called Benrus. He was formerly the Director of Operations at Alex and Ani. Rodrigo told last year’s class his ultimate goal in life is to become the President of Guatemala. Hope High Life Skills host of this class is Manny Rivas.
December 5 – Today’s guest: John Sinnott is an Engineer and Corporate Vice President at the Gilbane Building Company in Providence, Rhode Island. John is also an Irish immigrant and former NFL Football player. Hope High Life Skills host is Hafzat.
December 12Phyllis Smith is a Senior Advisor, Client Service Center-Med D, at CVS/caremark. Phyllis will introduce “LinkedIn” to the class and the benefits it can extend to all “Life Skills” students right now! LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. In 2006, LinkedIn increased to 20 million viewers. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 259 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories. Hope High Life Skills host is
December 19Randy Martinez, Director, Diversity Strategy and Management at CVS Health. Randy will speak about the importance and value of diversity in a person’s network as well as in successful companies like CVS. Randy will also share his personal story of overcoming difficult challenges in the pursuit of lifetime success.
January 9Donna Mumma, Senior Director of Pharmacy Inventory Management and Analytics at CVS Health, will speak about the CVS Internship Program offered to Hope High ‘Life Skills’ students. Hope Life Skills alums, Jean Rodriguez and Antoinette Muhammed will speak about their intern experiences in this CVS program.
January 16Nan Quinlan, formerly an executive at TACO Inc, one of Rhode Island’s most successful engineering companies.  Nan was an executive trainer at TACO.  She will focus during this class on job interviewing skills and techniques during some role playing sessions.
January 23 – Today’s guest: Adriana Dawson. Director of Employer Outreach & Engagement at Roger Williams University. Adriana’s story is one of learning from one’s mistakes to become a stronger and wiser person. Hope High Life Skills Host of this day is Cecelia.
January 30 –  Nick DeCesare, TWOBOLT Creative Director.    Artist.  Chef.  Mechanic.  Musician.  Father.  Husband. Graphic Designer.  Curious Lifelong learner.  Change Agent.  Collaborator Extraordinaire.  Innovator.  Risk taker.  College roommate of Adam Sandler.   Nick will share his story of curiosity, change, hard work, persistence, and personal fulfillment.  Our Hope High ‘Life Skills’ Host of this day is Joan.
February 6 – 15 year old, singer, songwriter Sidney Flanagan from Dighton Rehoboth High School in Massachusetts and her music mentor shares insights into the thought process for creating music and best practices for stepping out of one’s comfort zone to perform.   Hope Life Skills host for the class will be Gisabel.
February 13Junior Jabbe is the Executive Manager, Business Development & Customer Relationships at Banneker Industries, Inc. in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He’s also a former Division 1 collegiate football player.  Junior will share his personal story of ‘change’, from his youth in Maryland, overcoming challenges, developing a strong network of successful people and making tough choices to exclude former associates from this network.  Hope’s Life Skills’ host for the day is Fernando Perez

February 13 –  10am departure to TeeSpring, a crowdfunding platform for custom apparel. The company was founded by Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton in 2011 in Providence, RI as a way to simplify the process of selling custom t-shirts.[3] The company received a $20 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz. Teespring allows users to create unique campaigns in order to sell apparel designed by users like Hope ‘Life Skills’ students. Users choose the color and type of product they would like to sell, and add a design. Designs can be uploaded from outside of the platform, or be created using the variety of fonts and clip art provided by Teespring. After creating the design, users set a price for their item and choose a sales goal. No orders are processed, manufactured, or shipped, until the campaign has “tipped” or sales goal was reached or surpassed. Teespring handles the production and distribution of the shirts, as well as the customer service associated with any order placed on their site. All shirts are screen-printed in different facilities across the United States. Currently, Teespring offers t-shirts, hoodies, long-sleeve shirts, tank tops, and youth apparel.

February 27 –  No Class –   A mandatory Hope High administrative activity will be held this day.   Ms Antonia Lora will administer the activity.  Stephen Cronin will return the following week.
March 6 –  Suffolk University students will visit our ‘Life Skills’ class at Hope High.  These young men and women from Suffolk are a diverse group of learners representing countries from all over the world: Russia, China, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, to name a few.   I made a presentation to their class in November of 2014 on personal branding and then a second class comparing the development and consequences of personal brand with the development and consequences of the United States brand in the 20th and 21st century.
March 13 –  Nan Quinlan, formerly an executive at TACO Inc, one of Rhode Island’s most successful engineering companies, returns to Hope Life Skills to review job interviewing skills previously introduced to the class as well as an optimum resume design.
March 20 –  Job and Career Day at CVS Health at the CVS corporate headquarters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  Each year, the Hope Life Skills class is invited to the corporate CVS Health office for an opportunity to learn what it is like to work in a large, international company like CVS.  Students learn about the company’s culture, what employees can expect working for a $123 billion company (types of jobs, benefits, career opportunities,  stock options, work environment, cafeteria food, etc ) and at the same time, what a large company like CVS expects from its employees (on time all the time, character and ethics, empowerment, creativity, measured risk taking, speaking up, etc).  Students will then break out into small groups to meet and speak with employees in a variety of different jobs, from pharmacists, marketers and store managers to IT/computer programers, copywriters and graphic designers.

March 27  – Don Mays, Roger Williams University, Director of the Intercultural Center.   Don returns to our class to share his personal story and speak about the college search and admissions process.
April 10 –  Margaret Cashion Lysy, Associate Director Georgetown University, Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

April 17 – Samantha Rivera, Outreach & Recruitment Coordinator for ‘Year Up’.  ‘Year Up’ is an educational alternative to the year after graduation from Hope.    Samantha will tell us more about this exciting, national program.
• May 8 –  Tino Chow.   Singapore born and educated entrepreneur who completed his mandatory Singapore National Service commitment in the Singapore army.  This will be a grade related class where Life Skills students will be given a grade on their preparation and one question they ask Tino Chow during a question and answer session in class after reading the text book “The Story of Singapore and The Change Agent Who Created It“.
• May 15 –  Donna Mumma, Senior Director of Pharmacy Inventory Management and Analytics at CVS Health, returns to speak about the CVS Internship Program offered to Hope High ‘Life Skills’ students this summer of 2015.
• May 22 –  Scott Boulis, TeeSpring.  Follow up to our visit to the TeeSpring corporate office.  Some students will actually place their t-shirt design on the TeeSpring web site today with Ben’s help.
May 29 –  Senthil Kannaiyan, Senior Project Manager, Yiguang Qiu, Ph.D., Marketing Officer & Director of Market Research and Marcy Santos from the Amica Insurance company in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
• June 5Jeff Sparr, Founder of PeaceLove.  Peace Love is an organization offering support programs for children and adults dealing with the challenges of mental illness through art.
June 12Sergio Sousa, Director of Marketing – Twin River Casino and Megan McGuinness, Advertising & Media
Twin River casino (RI) | and the Hard Rock hotel & casino (MS) will share their stories of ‘marketing’, what marketing is, why marketing is an in-demand job in the 21st century, the fundamentals of marketing, turning ever changing data into information, creating messaging and brand perceptions that resonate with a market, and measuring success.

June 19 – Anonymous student review of Stephen Cronin’s performance as the ‘Hope Life Skills’ teacher. In other words, the students grade Stephen Cronin – A, B, C or F.

June 22 –      Annual Pawtucket Red Sox Networking Day. Each year the top Hope Life Skills students are invited to meet and network with successful business people from companies like Gilbane, CVS, Teespring, Benrus, TWOBOLT and others as well as university representatives (Berklee College of Music, Rhode Island College, Providence, Stonehill and more) about careers, higher education goals and potential summer PAID internships. All in the President’s suite right next to the field, fully catered with great baseball cuisine during a PawSox baseball game. One Hope High student is chosen to throw out the first pitch).