Maggie Skarich
by Barbara Mulligan
When Maggie Skarich entered the University of South Carolina nine years ago, she was certain of her major—and her future.
“The university had a very good hospitality management program, and I wanted to run a restaurant,” she says.
A few years and a few restaurant jobs later, Skarich had changed her mind. Today, at the age of 27, she serves as national coordinator of a nonprofit association and will soon begin a similar job for another association.
How did she get there?
First, Skarich says, getting real-life work experience as a student helped her realize that the restaurant business wasn’t what she wanted.
“I didn’t really like it,” she admits, explaining that while she wanted to continue majoring in hospitality management, she needed to find a new focus.
An internship in the meetings planning department at Harley-Davidson, based in Skarich’s hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gave her just that. There, at the motorcycle manufacturer’s headquarters, she assisted in preparing for a 5,000-attendee annual meeting, coordinated a 150-attendee breakfast, and planned signage.
“I decided that was the way I wanted to go,” she says.
Skarich says that while networking “didn’t come naturally to me,” she landed her first career position, as a meetings assistant with the Alliance for Children and Families (ACF) in Milwaukee, through a Carolina contact who knew somebody there and helped her arrange an interview.
Skarich soon moved into the position of member services associate. Then, three years after her arrival at AFC, board members of the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers (AACRC), approached the ACF’s chief operating officer to propose moving their offices from Washington, D.C., to the ACF’s headquarters in Milwaukee.
The AACRC, which includes professionals who work with children and adolescents diagnosed with behavioral health disorders, had always worked closely with the ACF, Skarich says, and the AACRC board knew about her work. It seemed natural for her to interview for the new job—and to get it.
“I joke that I’m the executive director and secretary and marketing director and janitor,” Skarich says, explaining that she is the association’s only full-time paid employee, aided by a “very active” board of directors and a freelance publications editor.
Still, Skarich adds, she’s been able to organize her work so that she rarely works more than 40 hours, enabling her to be an active member of the Young Professionals of Milwaukee and the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and to serve on the board of Milwaukee’s Park People organization.
On the job, she says, her biggest challenge is handling pleas for help from families with troubled teen-agers.
“I get phone calls from parents,” she says, explaining that while she refers them to the appropriate counselors and other service providers, she feels a tug on her emotions and has to fight the urge to become personally involved.
Other challenges, she says, are making sure all board members receive the recognition they deserve—and sometimes soothing ruffled egos.
“It’s all based on relationships,” she says.
Skarich’s new job, which she’ll begin next month, is partly the result of a relationship she built with a student in a YMCA Pilates class she taught.
The student mentioned a national manager job at the Association for High Technology Distribution, which was planning a move from Philadelphia to Milwaukee. Skarich was interested, and won both an interview and the job.
In her new role, Skarich will be working with employees at companies that manufacture and distribute high-technology automation equipment.
She attributes her success to hard work combined with assertiveness.
“Be willing to do what people ask for,” she says. “But at the same time, make suggestions so that they know you’re more than just a worker bee.”