“Every day is different,” Lisa Hartsgrove, Program Coordinator and Writing Instructor for Project Write Now, explains. “Every day I check registrations, answer emails, and answer and track missed calls. I also track payments, set schedules, keep our website up to date, manage our teen online literary magazine at www.bridgeink.org, and run our social media accounts. Often, I teach—at the studio I teach summer camps and adult classes throughout the year, and I also teach weekly and biweekly workshops at Red Bank Middle and Shore House, a clubhouse for adults with mental illness.”
In a society clouded by conversations opening with “I wish I was like” and “I wish I had,” Hartsgrove perfectly demonstrates the ideal of her field. When asked whose footsteps she’d like to be in for a day, she immediately assumed the role of another nonprofit organizer: Hannah Shaw of Kitty Lady.
Following that, talks shifted to dreams of a different job. “I absolutely love my job at Project Write Now,” she says, “but I am also very passionate about cats. Ideally, I want to find a way to combine these passions. My dream is to open up a separate branch of Project Write Now called Project Write Meow, where we run writing classes in a cat sanctuary. All cats would be adoptable.”
If she had a personalized motto on a t-shirt, Hartsgrove would choose the saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” And this phrase seems to perfectly encapsulate the genuineness that Hartsgrove radiated throughout the interview. With such a vibrant passion to help others, Hartsgrove’s attitude towards life prompts personal introspection—at least, that’s what it did for me.