“I’m a mom,” Jazmeen Chisholm says. “That’s the first thing I always tell people.” In fact, it was when she was pregnant with her son that the North Philadelphia resident began considering a career as a Medical Assistant. She signed up for a training program, and only had two classes left when the institute where she was enrolled abruptly shut down.
At that point, many people would have given up. But not Chisholm. After a few years in “mommy mode,” she had already made the decision to return to school when her boyfriend’s mother sent her a social media post about Propel America. The program offers tuition-free job training for healthcare careers to young adults from lower-income backgrounds with high school diplomas or GEDs. Participants receive a personal careers coach to help them set goals and overcome obstacles, earn a stipend while training, and have guaranteed interviews with Propel’s employer partners.
“When I interviewed with Propel, they explained that you have class on Zoom three times a week, and then you have in-person skills labs twice a week from 6:00-8:00 pm,” Chisholm says. “At that point, I was working a fast-food job from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, so when I left, I would literally run to school. But my village was very helpful in caring for my son, and Propel really helped me out, too. Scheduling the classes so they weren’t during the day was great, because I was able to work and go to school. They also gave us free Uber and Lyft codes to help us get to our Skills Labs, and got me a free laptop. I graduated without having to pay for basically anything out of pocket.”
Supported While Gaining Skills
When Chisholm started her externship and began receiving her stipend, she was able to quit her fast-food job and commit to her training full-time. “I did my externship in Gastroenterology at another health system,” she says. “It was a great experience, because it taught me more about the administrative side of being a Medical Assistant, including phone calls and prior authorizations for refills.”
When it came time to decide where she would go for her full-time position, Chisholm chose Temple Health. “I applied to Temple on my own, but I told my Propel coach that I had applied,” Chisholm remembers. “She said, ‘Well, let me see what I can do.’ I swear, two days later, I got a call from Temple, saying, ‘We want to interview you. Can you come in?’ We picked a day, I interviewed with two people, and it went great.”
Chisholm was hired to work at TUH-Main Campus’ Multi-Specialty Clinic, which includes our Comprehensive HIV Program, Infectious Diseases, Weight Loss, and the Burn Unit. “Getting the chance to work with four different departments is really fun,” she says. “You meet so many types of patients and get a lot of kinds of experience.” She feels especially proud of how her phlebotomy skills have grown: “The other day, I had a patient come in who’d had a bad experience with a blood draw,” she says. “I put the needle in, and she was like, ‘Oh my God. I didn’t even feel it. You need to follow me wherever I go.’”
Career Development for the Future
“We started working with Propel less than a year ago,” says Allyson Saccomandi, MEd, SPHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, Temple Health’s Vice President of Leadership and Organizational Development. “These kinds of partnerships are critical, because it’s become very difficult to recruit Medical Assistants and other, similar positions. At the same time, we have a lot of young people in our community who aren’t in college, and who would really benefit from the opportunity to pursue a career in allied health. That’s why we’re thinking strategically about how we can create pipelines to fill these roles, and how, in doing so, we can empower our neighbors.”
Chisholm, who grew up near 10th Street and Girard Avenue, has had nothing but success through Propel America and Temple Health. “I graduated from Propel with a 4.0 GPA, and they ended up making me their Valedictorian,” she says. “And since I’ve started at Temple, I’ve had so much motivation from the other nurses in the clinic. They talk to us a lot about expanding our career, and tell us, ‘You should try this,’ or ‘You’d be good in this area.’ So I’m definitely thinking about becoming a nurse, and going through Temple to do so.”
“The care our Medical Assistants and Patient Care Assistants provide is amazing, and so many of them are focused on taking the next steps in their careers,” Saccomandi says. “They’re all thinking, ‘How can I be a nurse?’ And our nurse leaders do so much to promote career development. Programs like Propel help us recruit, and then, once employees get here, we go out of our way to make sure they continue to advance.”
Chisholm knows her future is bright—and her advice to others is not to let anything dim that light. “I just tell people to stay focused,” she says. “I know that life sometimes gets in the way of your goals and your career. But it’s really about committing to it and saying, ‘Okay, I have to get this done because I want to.’ And you have to be able to do things for yourself, and not just because other people want you to do them. Don’t ever let anybody make you feel like you’re less than or not worth what you are and what you’ve done, either. Always be true to who you are. It’ll definitely take you far if you just stay committed to you.”
