Penn staff make the Philadelphia area a better place through side gigs
The 12th piece in Penn Today’s Side Gigs for Good series highlights staff who mentor and empower Latino professionals, lead Girl Scout troops, donate hand-knitted items to people in need, and connect Philadelphia children with music opportunities.
Among the Penn staff doing volunteer and community work outside their day jobs are (clockwise from top left) Girl Scout troop leader Heather Kelley-Thompson, Latino community mentor and leader Jessica DeJesus, child music education supporter Molly McGlone, and charitable knitter Mary Kinney.
(Images: Courtesy of (clockwise from top left) Heather Kelley-Thompson, Jessica DeJesus, and Molly McGlone. Bottom left: Eric Sucar)
Since 2019, Penn Today has periodically profiled the volunteering, fundraising, and community work that faculty, staff, and students do outside their job description, in Philadelphia and around the globe.
This is the 12th installment in the Side Gigs for Good series, featuring a Stuart Weitzman School of Design research grants manager who mentors and empowers Latino business professionals, a department director in the School of Nursing who leads three Girl Scout troops, a Penn Center for Innovation administrative coordinator who donates her hand-knitted items to people in need, and an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences who connects Philadelphia children to music opportunities.
Empowering Latino professionals
After graduating from high school, Jessica DeJesus landed a position in the accounting office of Mellon Bank, hired by a woman from Argentina. DeJesus has been paying it forward ever since.
“She gave me the opportunity,” DeJesus says. “It was because somebody took a chance with me, and I want to be able to provide that to someone else.”
Jessica DeJesus volunteers with the nonprofits Prospanica Philadelphia and Congreso de Latinos Unidos.
(Image: Courtesy of Jessica DeJesus)
DeJesus is a leader of Prospanica Philadelphia, an association of Latino business professionals, offering mentorship, networking events, and professional development, as well as connections to job openings and scholarships. A member since 2017, DeJesus completed her two-year term as president, and previously was treasurer and compliance officer. And this fall DeJesus joined the board of Congreso de Latinos Unidos, a nonprofit social service agency in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where she grew up.
She’s been featured in the media for her impact, including Al Dia, 6ABC and El Sol Latino. “It makes me feel good being able to teach people what I know,” she says. “I feel like I shouldn’t be the only Latina in an executive role. There are very few of us.”
DeJesus just created a partnership to host empowerment events for women, focused on career and financial planning.
“I’ve always been that person that’s going to motivate folks to go back to school,” she says. “I was a full-time employee when I went to college, and a parent. I tell them that if I can do it, you can do it.”
DeJesus is a leader of Prospanica Philadelphia, an association of Latino business professionals, offering mentorship, networking events, and professional development, as well as connections to job openings and scholarships.
(Image: Courtesy of Jessica DeJesus)
Fluent in Spanish and English, DeJesus was born in Puerto Rico but lived primarily in Philadelphia’s Fairhill neighborhood, going to public school. Encouraged by the success and support in that first banking job, she earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Peirce College and an M.B.A. from DeVry’s Keller Graduate School of Management.
Since 2018, DeJesus has been working at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design as director of the Research Support Center, which is responsible for managing all research grants and contracts. Previously she worked in the City of Philadelphia’s Procurement Department, including as Deputy Commissioner for Public Works.
This year she graduated with a master of law degree from the Penn Carey School of Law where she volunteered with the Penn Law Pardon Project, which pairs law students with client-partners to complete pardon applications.
DeJesus also owns a tax preparation business, TaxSpace, that she founded in 1997, and often volunteers to speak to groups. “I’m consistently teaching folks financial literacy,” she says, noting many clients speak only Spanish. “I’ll simplify it in a way that it’s understandable.”
Leading Girl Scouts
To say that Heather Kelley-Thompson is part of a Girl Scout family is an understatement.
Heather Kelley-Thompson and her middle child, Amber, an 8th grade student and Girl Scout Cadette who is currently working on her Silver Award project.
(Image: Courtesy of Heather Kelley-Thompson)
By day, she is a 19-year employee of the School of Nursing, working as a senior director in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences. By evening and weekend, she is serving as the leader of the three Delaware County Girl Scouts troops that count her daughters—ages 15, 14, and 11—among their 14 total members.
A Girl Scout herself, Kelley-Thompson became co-leader of one troop when her eldest daughter was in kindergarten. She recalls that when the troop needed a leader the following year, she told her daughter, “I can do this, but I don’t do anything halfway, so if we’re doing this, we’re doing it.”
This mindset has played out in her long-term planning of what progression looks like. The Daisies in kindergarten and first grade, she explains, might do a day trip or sleep overnight in a museum. The girls in the next two years, called Brownies, may do a two-night camping trip or theme park weekend. By middle school, the girls are ready for a longer regional trip: Kelley-Thompson has taken two troops on a 14-hour Amtrak train to Savannah, Georgia, the birthplace of Girl Scouting. The older two troops are saving for a 2026 trip to Europe.
“What I try to do is give them a taste of all different things. I offer it like a buffet, and then I restock the bowl that needs to be restocked,” Kelley-Thompson says, noting that some troops may prefer travel while others prefer crafts. The girls have also collected canned goods for food drives, led events for younger girls, and marched in local parades.
Kelley-Thompson has also guided girls through getting their Silver Award, which involves putting at least 50 hours of work into a project that makes a difference in the community. Her oldest daughter educated fifth graders about what climate change is and how to take action, and another Girl Scout created a geocaching website about Black history sites in Philadelphia.
Kelley-Thompson and her daughters pose for a picture at the Girl Scouts of the United States headquarters in New York City.
(Image: Courtesy of Heather Kelley-Thompson)
Kelley-Thompson says of kids’ involvement in Girl Scouts, “My number one hope for these girls coming out of this experience is to know that they have a voice and they have not just a right but an obligation to use it. I want them to be centered in their sense of self, I want them to be poised, and I want them to know that there’s a place for them in this world.”
Donating colorful creations
On a recent Monday afternoon, Mary Kinney headed to the Netter Center for Community Partnerships for what has now become an annual holiday tradition: donating items she has knitted throughout the year. This year, that included a dozen pairs of mittens, 11 hats, four sweaters, and one poncho.
Kinney, an administrative coordinator at the Penn Center for Innovation, says she has been knitting since about age four, having been raised in a family with a “do-it-yourself” sort of attitude. She picked up the hobby again about a decade ago. She loved a cowl with sleeves that a costume designer posted online but couldn’t afford the commission, so she bought the pattern instead and people helped her relearn.
Mary Kinney, right, talks to Isabel Sampson-Mapp, associate director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and director of Penn Volunteers in Public Service, as she donates her hand-knitted items.
(Image: Eric Sucar)
Kinney became immune-compromised during the COVID pandemic, which meant not going out to bars, restaurants, or parties. The do-it-yourself attitude of her mother’s family inspired her to instead spend time knitting. “Her family was very poor, and they lived on a farm, so if you were sitting around you weren’t doing anything, and that’s not productive for the whole,” she says. “I was raised with this whole notion of, ‘Don’t just sit around and do nothing.’”
She was wondering what to do with all her knitted items and eventually determined that Penn Medicine would accept her items as part of a coat drive. The following year, she saw an announcement from the Netter Center—which runs an array of holiday giving programs through its Penn Volunteers in Public Service—and has now taken her knitted goods there for the past few years.
This year, that includes a sweater that took about a month to knit, fingerless mitts from McGill University’s Rare Book Library, a pair of traditional Sanquhar gloves preserved by May McCormick, and the poncho, which she knitted over the course of 10 days while housesitting for friends who had gone to Iceland. And she makes them colorful. “Poverty’s hard, poverty’s exhausting, and I choose to do the colorwork because I want them to have something bright in their lives,” Kinney says.
While she doesn’t meet the recipients of her work, Kinney says she thinks throughout the year, “I hope it does brighten somebody’s day, I hope it keeps them warm, I hope it keeps them happy.”
Connecting children to music
Molly McGlone started playing the violin in elementary school and continued through college, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in music. Now she helps bring music to public school students in West Philadelphia.
At Penn for nearly 15 years, McGlone is the associate dean and director of academic affairs for the College of Arts and Sciences. She supports faculty governance for undergraduate policies, majors, minors, and general education requirements.
Molly McGlone volunteers as a conduit between Penn and the Henry C. Lea School community, supporting instrumental music and performing arts.
(Image: Eric Sucar)
Since 2012 she has also taught a first-year seminar, Music in Urban Spaces, that meets Friday afternoons. It’s an Academically Based Community Service course through the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, working with the Henry C. Lea School in West Philadelphia. The course is year-long “so the Penn students can work with the young students and see them progress,” she says. In addition to academic coursework, the Penn students help Lea with a winter concert, a spring concert, and a spring musical theater production.
McGlone is a conduit for support from Penn to the Lea music community. Last year, for example, she navigated the donation of lighting and sound equipment from the Platt Performing Arts House, finding volunteers to load her van and set it up at the school. Another year she organized donations of instruments.
“My driving interest is in leveraging what access to resources we have for what the school community needs,” McGlone says.
A resident of West Philadelphia, McGlone also organizes and supports Penn students who volunteer with a string ensemble at a neighborhood nonprofit, Musicopia. She manages the logistics, connecting with parents and working with Netter and Penn students to help the young musicians get to and from Musicopia.
McGlone studied violin from elementary school through graduate school. In addition to supporting the arts at the Lea School, she volunteers for the West Philadelphia nonprofit Musicopia.
(Image: Courtesy of Molly McGlone)
“I am interested and invested in the community, wanting to support kids whose families don’t really have a structural knowledge of music,” McGlone says. “We help them navigate the application process and the public transportation so that students can get the benefit of being in an ensemble with other kids from across the city.”
Growing up in Lubbock, Texas, she fell in love with the violin and practiced every day. At the University of Texas, she studied violin performance and went on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for music theory and music history. “Music can be very positive and spread positive social messages, helping us see ways of being that are different from what we’ve encountered,” McGlone says.
“I hope that music is helping these kids find joy and the good things that come with engagement. I think academics get better when somebody has a grounding in an extracurricular that brings them joy.”
When the Schuylkill swallowed the city: Lessons from Hurricane Ida’s historic flood
New Penn research shows that Hurricane Ida wasn’t a once-in-a-century anomaly but a preview of how climate change, urbanization, and aging infrastructure are rewriting flood risk.
The Fed explained: What it does and why it matters
Former Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker and financial historian Peter Conti-Brown, both Wharton professors, unpack the central bank’s origins, its unusual structure, and the quiet ways it shapes the economy
How population changes are impacting primary education worldwide
Research from Penn sociologist Emily Hannum and colleagues reveals regional trends in whether school-age populations are increasing, plateauing, or decreasing—and shows how different countries are responding.
A bioengineered bean gum from the lab of Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell is found to reduce the levels of three microbes associated with head and neck squamous cell cancer to almost zero, without affecting the beneficial bacteria normally found in the mouth.
Fighting oral cancer with bioengineered chewing gum
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell shows that antiviral and antibacterial chewing gums reduce the levels of three microbes linked to worse outcomes in oral cancers, paving the way for more effective and affordable therapies.
