Brad Vassallo came to Temple with a specific goal — "to have a tangible effect on communities."

"Growing up, I watched my dad working in a high stress office job. I decided I wanted to make a social focus my primary focus from the very beginning," said Vassallo, 22, of Quakertown, who will graduate with a B.S. in Community Development. "I want to be able to help people in a meaningful way. Temple was the only schools I applied to — I wanted the experiences and hands-on opportunities that the city environment would provide."

Nearing the finish line of his four-year journey at Temple, Vassallo has focused his community development acumen on workforce development.

"During the summer of 2014, I had the opportunity to intern with Banner Neighborhoods Community Corporation in Baltimore. I supervised four crew leaders and 18 YouthWorks participants while organizing daily neighborhood activities, such as neighborhood beautification projects and college tours," he said. "I was able to see firsthand how workforce develop programs like this had tangible benefits for the community. These programs can change the trajectory of someone's life; they can change neighborhoods."

Vassallo said he also has a keen interest in physical development — removing blight to spur economic revitalization — and "building social capital; getting various stakeholders to work together toward a common, positive goal." Getting various disparate viewpoints to find common ground and work together "have been my life every day," for the past few years, he said.

In 2015, he interned with two community-based organizations, the Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM) and the People's Emergency Center, to coordinate the implementation of sustainability efforts resulting from a "Green Neighborhood Toolkits" planning project. The community-wide effort was supported by Temple's Center for Sustainable Communities and a $25,000 Wells Fargo Foundation grant.

"The emphasis from our professors throughout the Community Development program is on real world experience. Your projects are based in reality — real communities, real people, real budgets — and that gives you a much better understanding of what it would be like working in the field," Vassallo said. "I'm leaving Temple with real on the ground experience. I've learned so much in the classroom, but that has been substantially supplemented by these experiences — you're able to propel yourself forward professionally."

Once he arrived at APM, Vassallo never left. He is currently Assistant Coordinator for the Pop Up Market Place (PUMP) program in APM's Community Economic Development department, a position in which he'll continue after graduation.

"PUMP right now is focused on the corner of 6th Street and Susquehanna Avenue, a plot owned by APM. It's centered around the idea of place making," he said. "The idea is comparable in some ways to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's pop up gardens or the pop up beer gardens that have proven very popular in the city — spurring activity and interest in a space. In this case, we're repurposing the model to spur economic development along the Germantown Avenue corridor."

Vassallo said he is working on the infrastructure behind the PUMP project, which in the short term will provide entrepreneurial opportunities to area residents, in addition to working on physical site development will Angel Rodriguez, Vice President of Community Economic Development for APM.

"I've been involved in coordinating community engagement strategies and managing communications with our project partners in addition to developing market research to inform the decision-making process through this project," he said. "This is very much a community-driven effort — our steering committee of community members is essential to the process. It's placing the decision-making power of the community back into planning."

Community Development Corporations like APM most often work toward the goals of the community "rather than doing something for themselves."

"That's what drew me to these types of projects and organizations. Ultimately, I'd like to work toward a leadership or senior management position in an organization like APM — I want to use what I've learned on the ground, helping where it is needed most," he said. "I think community developers, city planners need to work to ensure that decisions are being made with the best intentions of the communities in mind."

Too often, Vassallo said, "things happen to us rather than for us." 

"I am Temple Made and Temple proud," he said. "I look forward to putting my skills to good use and providing communities the tools to know why and how to become advocates for themselves."