NPM Peer Career Counselors

The Nonprofit and Public Management Center employs part-time student/peer counselors in each of our partner schools (Business, Public Policy and Social Work) for students seeking guidance on possible careers in the nonprofit and public sectors. These counselors can offer general career and job seeking advice, resume reviews, and mock interviews. For more information on this service or to schedule an appointment, please send an e-mail to nonprofit@umich.edu. Please note that  Peer Career Counselors operate within a seven-day turnaround from the time they receive your email and may not be available upon immediate request.

Career Counselor Biographies

Taryn MacFarlane
MPP, 2008

Taryn will be a third year MPP/MBA joint-degree student with the Ford School of Public Policy and the Ross School of Business, where she is focusing on the intersection public and private sectors, particularly in the areas of economic development, workforce development, and access to education.  Taryn interned at the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce in the summer of 2006, and has remained on the staff there as a Policy Fellow during the 2006-07 academic year.  CSW is a non-profit consulting organization focused on re-imagining how school-based and workplace- based learning models intersect.  Taryn’s most recent project there has focused on employer strategies that drive successful employment of hourly/frontline staff, working with both government agencies and the private sector.  Taryn will be interning in the private sector this summer for Cisco Systems in their HR department.  Prior to graduate school, Taryn was an internal consultant for the Girl Scouts of the USA for five years.  Taryn completed her BA at Tufts University with a double major in women’s history and child development and worked in the UK after graduation.

Tim Johnson-Aramaki
MBA/MPH, 2009

Tim Johnson-Aramaki is a second year MBA/MPH dual degree student, concentrating on organizational strategy and dynamics with a specific interest in accountability and sustainability in nonprofits. Tim worked for seven years at the national offices of Planned Parenthood, where he worked on the re-launch of their diversity initiative, including creating tools to impart and measure cultural competence. He also helped to research and develop Real Life. Real Talk., a social marketing initiative in partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation, which promotes honest and open talk about sex and health. During the summer of 2007, through Domestic Corps and the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, he interned at the Mexicantown Community Development Corporation in Detroit, Michigan, developing a business plan for a revenue-generating social enterprise and implementing strategies for a small business incubator. He graduated from Grinnell College with a degree in Fine Arts.

Lisa McLaughlin
MSW/MSI, 2009

Lisa McLaughlin is a second-year, dual-degree student studying human services management at the School of Social Work and information policy and community informatics at the School of Information. Her current professional and academic interests are focused on cross-sector collaboration, the digital divide, the Mississippi gulf area reconstruction process, and nonprofit technology capacity building. She has interned for the Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service Learning’s Project Community, where she developed programming for the Ford Foundation-sponsored, campus-wide interfaith "Difficult Dialogues" initiative. Lisa held a support position at the University of Michigan Addiction Research Center, a Section of the UM Psychiatry department. She also held a position as a Field Instructor for Second Nature Therapeutic Wilderness Program, an experiential adolescent treatment program in Duchesne, Utah. A native of Ann Arbor, Lisa has extensive familiarity with local nonprofits through consulting and volunteer work. She holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan.