Neuberger Berman, “Congratulations, Servon”

Anthony DeSantis, Senior VP of Information Technology & Services at Neuberger Berman, attended the 2013 ROI Corporate Dinner with Servon Lewis, this year’s student keynote speaker. Anthony wrote the following post in response:

“For the first Celebration with Service in 2010, we hosted a group of Per Scholas students, who toured our datacenter and technology, and participated in mock interviews. We’ve done this event successfully every year since.

Per Scholas, a Neuberger Berman Foundation grantee since 2010, is a national nonprofit organization that breaks the cycle of poverty by providing technology education, access, training and job placement services for people in low-income communities.

That first event was such an overwhelming success and I was so impressed with the group that I wanted to engage them further. The result was a desktop support intern program. To date, we’ve had nine interns rotate through our program, giving the students hands-on training related to their coursework, while also helping them develop their customer service and life skills.

Last year, one of the interns stood out. Servon Lewis showed such excellent communication skills and technical support abilities that we extended his internship. When a position then became available, Servon transitioned to a permanent role on our helpdesk. Having turned his internship into a job, Servon is a Per Scholas success story.

He is currently featured as their student of the month and was recently the keynote student speaker at the Per Scholas 2013 ROI Corporate Dinner, in which he spoke in front of 300 corporate IT leaders.

I encourage you to read Servon’s speech, a touching account of how the Per Scholas program changed his life.

Next time you call the helpdesk, you may speak with Servon directly and now you’ll have some insight into the voice on the other end of the line.”

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To add, Servon was recently interviewed along with President & CEO of Per Scholas, Plinio Ayala, on Bloomberg TV’s Deirdre Bolton show. After it aired, and in addition to Mr. DeSantis’ expressive piece, the praise and supportive compliments have been nonstop from our committed corporate partner Neuberger Berman and its employees (and beyond, thanks to Twitter). Per Scholas — and Servon — are touched. Thank you.