“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
— Winston Churchill
This week’s profile, Alyssa Mutryn, does both by getting people to give. As director of development for The Attic Youth Center, Mutryn is responsible for making sure our LGBT youth get the services they need. We spoke to the Bethesda, Md., native to find out what motivates her to help our youth.
PGN: When you think of “LGBT Philadelphia,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
AM: [Laughs] Wow! Starting off with a huge question, Suzi. The first thing that popped in my head was the broad array of resources available here, from The Attic to Mazzoni Center to William Way. That and all the awesome people that make up the community.
PGN: I noticed on your résumé that most of the work you’ve done has been geared toward services for women and children. What drew you to that line of work?
AM: Well, I don’t think anyone grows up saying, “I want to be a director of development when I grow up.” I was a psychology and anthropology major first at Franklin and Marshall College. I took a class focused on the foster-care system and it really made me want to do something to help change that system. I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and I think that had an impact on my interest in policy change. My parents read the paper to us first thing every morning — the Washington Post as well as other papers of interest — and I was influenced by that a lot. I got my master’s of social work at University of Pennsylvania and it was a combined degree for social work and public administration, I guess with a goal of working on policy. I learned a lot about child welfare and took classes focused on nonprofit management and administration. I always wanted to do something to help children and youth.
PGN: What did the parents do?
AM: My dad is a lawyer — he’s still practicing, outside of D.C. — and my mom is a teacher and also worked with education and nonprofits.
PGN: So you’re a combination of both; I’d imagine the administrative, corporate side from your father and the child and education side from your mother.
AM: Exactly! They were good role models.
PGN: Do you have siblings?
AM: Yes, I have a brother. He’s two years younger than me and married with three kids.
PGN: How far from D.C. were you?
AM: Five or 10 minutes. We were right on the D.C. border so we were in the city all the time. We’d go for concerts, musicals — the whole family loves musicals, especially my father — and other events. We’d volunteer for different causes as well. I remember my parents taking us to a soup kitchen, and I was involved with a church group that did a lot of volunteer activities. But as much as I enjoyed D.C., I have to say I like Philly better. I moved here for grad school in 2001 and fell in love with the town. D.C. is very political; people are attached to their jobs and laser-focused on their careers. I love the community feel of Philadelphia. I love my job but don’t want to work 70 hours a week; you need to have balance. I think it benefits your work in the long run.
PGN: What was a favorite family memory?
AM: My parents were always on the go, even more so than I am and I feel like I’m always on the go. They love to travel so we’d go hiking every summer in the Adirondacks. My great uncle built a house up there generations ago and so each extended family would get a week there each summer. We’d go boating and fishing and tubing and rafting and hiking and it’s one of my favorite memories. I still try to go every summer.
PGN: That’s funny, one of my questions for you was going to be about the fact that I see you and your wife Shay everywhere. You two are always out and about!
AM: I know! I definitely get that from my parents. Thank God Shay is like that too, we both hate sitting around. That’s part of the reason we’re married and get along so well. I think I’m more the extroverted one. My dad would always say, “The Mutryn family thrives at a cocktail hour” but Shay is very social as well. We just got back from visiting my cousins in Colorado.
PGN: I’m sure that sociability is good for your line of work.
AM: Yes, I go to a lot of events with this job so it’s a good thing I enjoy it.
PGN: I’m sure a lot of schmoozing comes with the territory.
AM: [Laughs] I prefer to say making connections. A lot of people think that about development directors, but I feel like I like to be more genuine than just schmoozing.
PGN: I stand corrected! So tell me a little bit about what a development director does.
AM: At The Attic we’re a smaller nonprofit, though we’ve grown a lot over the years. I’m the person directly responsible for generating all of the funds to make the place operate: everything from paying the staff to keeping the building air conditioned to furniture to materials, everything. I’m currently a staff of one but development people never work alone. I work in partnership with the board and our executive director Carrie Jacobs, the rest of the staff and the awesome youth here who are instrumental in helping with fundraising. They give tours to donors, I’ve had youth help me write grants, they help with events and plan their own fundraisers. It’s a group effort. And hopefully we’ll be getting a second person to be on the development staff very soon.
PGN: I heard you mention that you were looking for someone and everyone’s first reaction was, “You have the budget for that?”
AM: I know! Why does everyone say that? Yes. And a development person is a great hire. It gives you another person to bring in more money for the organization. I’ve been here seven years and every month, every day there are things I can’t get to because this is such a deadline-driven job. I need to focus on applications that are pretty sure bets, but there are others that are a stretch that we could try with more help. New donors to reach out to, etc. I’m excited to have a new person to help us grow even further.
PGN: Tell me a little history of The Attic.
AM: It was started in 1993 by Carrie Jacobs when she was in graduate school. It was at a time when there weren’t many or any resources for LGBT youth. It was literally in the attic of a social-services organization and it was originally only supposed to be an eight-week support group but so many people showed up, it was clear that there was a need for it.
PGN: Yeah, and a lot of adults were afraid to work with LGBT youth at the time. It was pretty verboten.
AM: I was in high school then so I don’t know …
PGN: [Laughs] Don’t make me hurt you!
AM: No! I just mean that I didn’t have this kind of resource either, there were no GSAs at the time. In fact, that’s one of the things I hear the most from donors when they tour the place: “I wish I’d had this when I was a teenager.”
PGN: When did you come out?
AM: It was when I was in grad school, 2001. At first I didn’t really have the language around it. I came out as lesbian or bisexual because I’d dated a guy in college. He’s awesome and we’re still friends. I dated both men and women and once I started learning about feminism and queer theory and stuff, it gave me the language to identify as queer. To me it’s more inclusive of gender presentations and identities and is a better fit for how I feel.
PGN: When did you and Shay meet?
AM: About four-and-a-half years ago, we’d both gone through breakups and Kate Hinchey — someone you’ve interviewed — convinced me to go to Sisters — RIP Sisters — one night. It was after Crystal Cheatham’s Soulforce event. I didn’t even know Kate that well but I went along. She knew Shay from Temple and had asked her to come too. We were introduced and started dating immediately.
PGN: And now you’re married!
AM: We are! I sometimes forget. Just last week I introduced Shay as my girlfriend to someone: “Oops, partner, I mean wife.” Whatever. Fortunately, she doesn’t care.
PGN: Nice. And what’s your obsession with The Learning Channel?
AM: [Laughs] You did do your homework! This is embarrassing. OK, so if I’m at home with the TV on in the background, it’s always turned to TLC. I think it’s interesting to see people who are different from the people I see every day. Samantha Guisti was my roommate for three years and she also likes TLC, so when they had the TLC Festival at Penn’s Landing our friend Bryan Buttler got us passes to interview people at the event. We ended up doing an interview with Kate Gosselin and all our friends went crazy because it was the last thing people expected from us!
PGN: Switching back to more serious things, I read a piece you posted from someone speaking about reinventing philanthropy with an eye toward equity. What does that mean, and what is the Foundation Complex?
AM: That’s a term coined by human-rights activist Ella Baker to describe the situation when you have a small and mostly homogeneous group of people who control the money, which is then distributed to nonprofits. Often they don’t really understand the needs of those who the money is intended for and will attach specific requirements that may or not be in the best interest. Whenever I’m talking to donors or foundation leaders, I try to stress the importance of giving unrestricted money and letting the organizations make the decisions since they know best how to meet the needs of the mission and the people they serve. Fortunately, we have some great donors and foundations that we work with who understand that we work as a partnership with our youth and why it’s important that they are empowered. I always try to inject social-justice values whenever I speak and they’ve been very receptive.
PGN: What’s poverty porn?
AM: That’s when an organization tries to exploit the condition of the people they’re trying to help to generate sympathy and donations for a cause. You’ve seen the ads where they make the people and/or animals look miserable to elicit a response from you. We work carefully to make sure that’s not happening. We stay away from terms like “at risk” to describe our youth because the kids who come here are awesome. They’re energetic and creative and social-justice-focused and want to create change in their communities and the world. Yes, some have experienced some difficult times — being abandoned by family or bullied, what have you — but that’s not who they are. I’ve had to have some conversations with funders about labels and intersectionality. They’re also not just queer kids, they have other identities that are important too. They’re black or Latino, trans or left-handed, we’re all not just one thing. I try to use language that’s affirming and uplifting and reflects the youths that come here.
PGN: What’s motivating for you?
AM: I’ve been here long enough to see people who came here as 16-year-olds now grow up to be young adults. Seeing kids who came here who were terribly shy, or without a home, not knowing what was next for them or what to focus on in school, now fully blossomed and in college or working in the social-justice arena using skills they learned here is inspiring. They’re now role models and wonderful students and/or employees and good all-around people. It’s so cool.
PGN: You work with youth, so what advice would you give your 19-year-old self?
AM: Wow. Sometimes I think I’m still her. I definitely feel younger than I am, though I wouldn’t want to go back to being 19. I guess I’d tell her the typical things: to have confidence in herself, to be true to yourself and that things will happen when they should.
PGN: Best birthday?
AM: I’ve had a lot of good ones. My birthday is in January and a few years ago Shay took me to New York to go skating and we went to see “Avenue Q,” so that was really fun. We also had a party at Giorgio on Pine that was fun.
PGN: You’re on death row. What do you want as your last meal?
AM: Well, I’m really against the death penalty, so that would suck! But I’d want my favorite foods: sushi, pizza and Mexican food, not usually all together.
PGN: Who’s your celebrity crush?
AM: Lin-Manuel Maranda. We’re going to see “Hamilton” in November. Shay makes fun of me because I donated to some fundraiser he was a part of and I got a postcard of him that I keep on the refrigerator.
PGN: I know people are always welcome to donate funds to The Attic but what are some non-monetary ways people can help?
AM: We are always looking for volunteers, especially in our new kitchen. We’d love for people to bring food and cook a meal for the kids or use food from our pantry to create something. We serve dinner every day for anywhere from 30-50 people.
PGN: Really? I can’t cook but I make a mean salad.
AM: That’d be great! We have some food here from Philabundance and other sources. We also get regular donations from companies like the Oyster House and Giorgio on Pine and Dow Chemical, and a lot of other companies or restaurants will make one-time donations. Starbucks just did four-weeks’ worth.
PGN: What else?
AM: People can host fundraisers for us. We also do a lot of item collections like school supplies and backpacks for back to school. As we get into winter, coats, hats and gloves are needed. We love it when people get their companies to do toiletry or snack-food drives. There’s always something you can do!
To learn more about The Attic Youth Center, visit www.atticyouthcenter.org.
To suggest a community member for Family Portrait, email [email protected].