Current Members
Tulane University’s Center for Public Service collaborated with the AmeriCorps VISTA Program to sponsor 25 AmeriCorps VISTA members to work full-time with community partners to assist in their efforts to serve New Orleans. During their term VISTA members work to develop and forge long-term partnerships between the local community and the Center for Public Service, which oversees the public service graduation requirement for Newcomb-Tulane undergraduate students.
VISTA members act as liaisons between the Center for Public Service and the community and help to arrange service-learning and internship experiences for students at their placement site. The goal of this program is to have AmeriCorps VISTA members, Tulane students, faculty, and staff assist community partners with capacity building in the coming years as the city recovers from Hurricane Katrina.
 Ben Brubaker, Program Coordinator
Term Of Service: October 2011-October 2013
Ben Brubaker serves as the Tulane VISTA Leader, helping to recruit, coordinate and support the 15 Tulane VISTA’s at their various Community Partner sites around New Orleans. Before coming to CPS, Ben served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at the NFL Youth Education Town, a unit of Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeast Louisiana. Ben graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. in Philosophy and African & African Diaspora studies, where he served as the Director of Hip-Hop for Hope, an annual not-for-profit benefit concert to raise money for New Orleans education. Coming up on his 7th year living in New Orleans, Ben spends his free time in the city seeing live music, playing soccer in City Park, and camping in the Louisiana wilderness.
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Lucy Rosenbloom, Southern Food and Beverage Museum
Term of Service: November 2011 - November 2013
Lucy grew up in Mill Valley California, a fairly small town on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Staying close to her Bay Area home she attended the University of California Berkeley where she majored in American Studies with an Urban Geography focus. There she pursued her interest in storytelling by volunteering for the campus radio station's news and public affairs programs. While studying abroad in South Africa she fully realized the power that radio could have in connecting people and decided that a career in radio journalism would be her goal for the future. Her current work as a VISTA at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is nurturing her appreciation for storytelling as she is surrounded by artifacts that reflect a diverse group of voices and tell so many peoples' stories which, without the space of the museum to document them, may otherwise be forgotten.
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Betsy Bateman, Kedila Family Learning Services
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Betsy was born in rural Bogalusa, Louisiana and was raised in suburban Mandeville, Louisiana. For college, she attended Tulane University, majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology. Before and during her time at Tulane, Betsy volunteered in her rural, suburban, and urban communities. She looks forward to giving back to the New Orleans community full time this year and getting to know the city better as she works for Kedila Family Learning Services. After her year of service, Betsy will attend Tulane University School of Medicine and will specialize in internal medicine.
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Fernando Reyes, Latino Farmers' Cooperative of Louisiana
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Born and raised in South Texas, Fernando Reyes grew up where Latin America and the United States collide and mix. Growing up in a transborder culture gave Fernando the ability to interact in both sides of the Rio Grande. At Southwestern University, Fernando graduated with a B.A. in History in May 2010. In May 2012, Fernando completed his M.A. degree in Latin American Studies at Tulane. His experiences at Southwestern and Tulane with the local Latino communities in Georgetown, TX and New Orleans, LA, respectively, installed within him a desire to give back to Latino diaspora. By participating in AmeriCorps VISTA, Fernando hopes to gain the skills and experience necessary to one day make a great difference in his homeland, the Rio Grande Valley.
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Jack Hua, Kids ReThink New Orleans Schools
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Jack Hua is serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) in New Orleans that helps to expand and build capacity for organizations. Jack will be working with the organization Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, an organization that was created after the devastation of hurricane Katrina, to help rebuild New Orleans to be even better than it once was. Prior to his service with AmeriCorps VISTA, Jack was an undergraduate at Tulane University studying chemistry, receiving a BS in Chemistry in 2012. Jack has a lot of experience working with kids at many different camps and in many different areas in both academics and sports. In his free time, Jack likes to weight lift, play frisbee, work with computers, and enjoy everything New Orleans has to offer.
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Jason Lacoste, FirstLine Charter Schools
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Born in New Orleans and raised on the move, Jason lived in six different cities before starting high school at Grace King in Metairie. He was accepted into Tulane's Psychology program and eventually earned a B.A., the first in his family to do so. But it was no easy path, and in 2003 Jason dropped out, packed a bag, and bought a bus ticket. His travels were an eye-opening adventure; from a mountaintop commune in New Mexico to being elected a Washington state delegate in the 2004 Presidential election, then to southern Arizona subsisting on a raw food diet for three months and on to a Buddhist retreat center in Colorado. In 2006, he returned home to finish what he started. Since graduating in '07, Jason has been working on a teaching certification through Tulane. He taught for two years at Audubon Charter Montessori School and one year in Taiwan. Unsure now about his path, Jason is dedicated to building relationships and serving the community.
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Lauren Lim, Youth Rebuilding New Orleans
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Lauren hails from the Detroit area. She attended Tulane for undergrad, where she studied Cellular and Molecular Biology. Her passion for community service was sparked by her experiences working with the children of Banneker Elementary as a reading buddy. She loves working with children and aspires to become a pediatrician. She is very excited for the opportunity to work with Youth Rebuilding New Orleans.
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Jean Hsu, Homer A. Plessy School
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Jean grew up in Los Angeles and went to UC Berkeley to experience something a little further from home. There she started working in Education and continued to pursue her MA in Education from USC. Her current position at Plessy Community School will allow her to experiment and experience educational reform at a local level.
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Kylie Kastes, ARISE Academy
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
I'm a recent Tulane Grad and a semi-retired Tulane Swimmer and Cross Country Runner. I am originally from Clearwater, Florida and when I decided to move to NOLA for school, I just couldn't leave! I have an identical swim who also swam at a Division I school, Cal-Berkeley. My favorite things to do are run, get tan and shop! I am excited to be a VISTA!
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Richard Tang, Broadmoor Development Cooperation
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Richard has constantly moved eastward ever since being born in Hawaii, most recently attending Tulane University, where he majored in Biochemistry and minored in Economics. He has always been interested in community service, and is excited to spend a year working for the Broadmoor Development Corporation before attending medical school.
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Kathleen Duffy, Joseph S. Clark High School
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Kathleen grew up on Long Island in New York (Yankees all the way, for those interested) and attended the University of San Diego where she majored in Political Science and French. Over Spring Break of her senior year, she went on a service-oriented immersion trip here in New Orleans where she and a group of 11 other students constructed a public mural for the Community Book Center on Bayou Road. Kathleen fell in love with the culture, community, and just about everything else about New Orleans. She is looking forward to serving here and getting to know the city even more through AmeriCorps.
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Noel Chacha, APEX Youth Center
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Noel comes from an artistic background and hopes to us his experience and education to help grow the capacity of the APEX Youth Center. Born in Nairobi, Kenya Noel has traveled the world taking pictures and making films and considers himself a world citizen. He claims to have an angelic singing voice and can be heard belting a tune in the shower early on weekday mornings.
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Jack Duffy, A's & Aces
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Jack was born and raised in Sacramento, CA and earned his BA from Notre Dame's Program of Liberal Studies. As a Tulane VISTA, he will be working with A's and Aces, a program designed to provide life skills, academic support, and tennis instruction to New Orleans youth. Although he can't play tennis, he is excited to combine his love of sports and his love of community service in a meaningful way.
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Jon Hourcade, Sanofka Community Development Corporation
Term of Service: July 2012-July 2013
Jon Hourcade, a Saint Louis native, studied business and music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Upon graduation in May of 2010, Jon moved to Baltimore, Maryland where he performed commercial revitalization on the York Road commercial corridor of north Baltimore City. In Baltimore, he designed and implemented a farmers' market that continues to serve low income families and senior citizens and laid the framework for a Main Street program. Jon looks forward to continuing his work in food access at the Sankofa Community Development Corporation.
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