I entered the Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica national office at around 9 am and met Mr. Tobias Rodriguez ‘11, the alum­nus spon­sor of the Princetern­ship, at the door. He took me up to the sev­enth floor, where he works, and then intro­duced me to his cowork­ers and gave me a tour of the other floors in the build­ing. I even got to meet a per­son on one of the Planned Par­ent­hood advo­cacy posters! After this infor­mal tour, Tobias pre­sented me with a sched­ule of events for the day.

At 11 am, I met with Jon Knowles, Direc­tor of Sex­ual Health Infor­ma­tion. After he gave me a brief descrip­tion of his job – he makes pam­phlets and fact sheets on a vari­ety of sex-related issues such as sex­ual health and birth con­trol – we had a nice chat about the his­tory of Planned Par­ent­hood. We dis­cussed the cur­rent related polit­i­cal issues, Mar­garet Sanger’s con­tri­bu­tion to birth con­trol, and present day con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods. When asked what inspired him to work for Planned Par­ent­hood, Jon replied that he saw how unin­formed peo­ple were about issues regard­ing sex and he wanted to do some­thing about it. He even knew a girl in the 60’s who threw her­self down a flight of stairs in an attempt to cause a mis­car­riage. I left our con­ver­sa­tion with a few pam­phlets and fact sheets, what will surely be nice read­ing for my train ride back to Princeton.

Then Tobias, his coworker Alex, and I enjoyed a nice Chipo­tle lunch on the High Line. It doesn’t get much bet­ter than 70 and sunny in New York City!

When I got back to the office, I went to my 2 pm meet­ing with Cather­ine Lozada, a writer and edi­tor in Planned Parenthood’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment. She informed me that Planned Par­ent­hood has no pub­lic rela­tions depart­ment, so com­mu­ni­ca­tions needs to act as a “legal eagle” in mak­ing sure that press releases are in accor­dance with the organization’s views and the views of the 79 affil­i­ates of Planned Par­ent­hood. Dur­ing this meet­ing, I watched Cather­ine copy edit a blog post for www.womenarewatching.org, the polit­i­cal action site for Planned Par­ent­hood. This spe­cific blog post was about how Vir­ginia gov­er­nor Bob McDon­nell signed a bill into law that forces women to receive ultra­sounds when they get abor­tions, despite him say­ing that peo­ple should be in con­trol of their health­care. Part of Catherine’s job is mak­ing sure blog posts like these get onto the polit­i­cal action web­site so read­ers are aware of the press­ing Planned Parenthood-related issues.

My last meet­ing of the day was at 4 pm with Ariel Kaplan, con­tri­bu­tions proces­sor of the devel­op­ment depart­ment. His floor han­dles the fundrais­ing aspect of Planned Par­ent­hood, and Ariel keeps the con­tri­bu­tions data­base up to date. In fact, he is even work­ing on a pilot project that aims at data­base inte­gra­tion across the coun­try with the dif­fer­ent Planned Par­ent­hood affil­i­ates to improve effi­ciency of con­tri­bu­tions pro­cess­ing. Ariel and I spent the most of our con­ver­sa­tion talk­ing about the Susan G. Komen con­tro­versy, in which the orga­ni­za­tion cut fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood. At the end of our chat, he touted the virtue of non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, inform­ing me that before work­ing here he was not polit­i­cal at all. He said he loves work­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood because of the “great health ben­e­fits, atmos­phere, and people.”

Over­all, I had an enrich­ing day work­ing with the Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica, and I am very grate­ful to Tobias for this oppor­tu­nity (and for the Chipo­tle). From the gen­uine kind­ness of every­one I met to the office penthouse’s fan­tas­tic view of New York City, I enjoyed every moment of this Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence. After hav­ing left the Planned Par­ent­hood office, I feel I have gained both greater insight into the work­ings of a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion and a deeper under­stand­ing of the all the issues related to the sex­ual and repro­duc­tive health­care Planned Par­ent­hood provides.