The VISTA Project

Salma Rashid served as the Transform Mid-Atlantic (TMA) AmeriCorps VISTA Alumni Affairs Coordinator with Friendship Public Charter Schools from July 2020 to July 2022, completing two full years of national service in Washington, D.C.. She entered the role shortly after graduating from William & Mary with a degree in Government and a minor in Management and Organizational Leadership.

The Challenge
Friendship Public Charter Schools sought to build a sustainable network of post-graduation support to keep alumni connected to stable career and academic pipelines. However, creating lasting engagement with past graduates required breaking down operational silos and establishing structured outreach systems. This challenge became especially critical during her first service year as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional schooling, meaning all connection strategies had to navigate a fully virtual environment.

The Solution
Salma utilized her foundational training in leadership and community engagement to establish a centralized community of support for current and past students. She co-developed a pre-alumni program series to increase high school student engagement with the Alumni Affairs Office prior to graduation. She also helped design and launch the Class Connectors Program and the formal Alumni Association, creating survey tracking systems to keep contact databases updated and accurate.

To celebrate and engage the community, Salma grew the network's traditional Alumni Day into an expanded Alumni Week series. When the school system pivoted to virtual operations due to the pandemic, she quickly transitioned all planning by building a dedicated Google site, organizing virtual game nights, and setting up an online Day of Service. She also researched financial literacy partnerships and created a seasonal alumni newsletter to maintain steady communication. As in-person restrictions eased, she served as the lead planner for a celebration honoring alumni who had successfully graduated from college.

The Legacy
Salma's efforts built vital institutional capacity for the charter school's lifelong alumni tracking networks. Her service provided a thrived blueprint for peer-led programming and structured outreach campaigns. Her work over a two-year period ensured that underrepresented youth retained a continuous, interactive connection to essential post-graduate resources and peer support networks.

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Life After VISTA

Following her initial VISTA service year, Salma balanced her ongoing community capacity building with higher education, earning a Master of Public Administration from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey between 2021 and 2023. During this period, she expanded her international perspective on systemic change through a four-month internship with UNICEF in Ghana as a Child Protection Intern in early 2023. Her time in Ghana introduced her to the inner workings of local governance and reinforced the power of a collective impact approach, which relies on cross-sector alignment rather than isolated efforts.

These combined experiences fueled her desire to step permanently into public service at the municipal and county levels, where she could directly witness the local deployment of policy and structural change. In July 2023, she joined the City of Durham, North Carolina, as an ICMA Local Government Management Fellow. After completing her one-year fellowship, she transitioned into a permanent role with the City of Durham as a Budget Analyst from August 2024 to March 2026, where she managed municipal resources and helped enact public policies and programs designed to see tangible change on a local level.

Salma currently applies these collaborative frameworks to a advanced leadership role in North Carolina local government, serving as a Management Analyst for Granville County Government. In this position, which she started in March 2026, she continues to apply her analytical background to manage public resources, evaluate institutional goals, and drive collaborative solutions that support broader community engagement and local administrative strategy.