September 8, 2000

Like most teenagers, Rafhel Morgado isn't sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Working in the MGH President's Office this summer, however, helped Morgado get closer to deciding. Thanks to the Partners Summer Jobs Program, sponsored by Partners Human Resources, Morgado, along with 75 other high school students, worked all summer long at various Partners institutions.

From left, Nancy Martilla of the MGH President's Office and Peggy Meehan of Community Benefits help Rafhel Morgado with a project.

Morgado considers himself lucky to have found a summer job that gave him such good experience working in an office. "I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do after I get out of school," says Morgado. "But working here this summer, I discovered that I do like health care. I don't want to be a doctor, but maybe I could do something in administration or finance. The main thing is that I like to work with people. I'm definitely a people person."

Among Morgado's duties working for James J. Mongan, MD, MGH president, were typing, filing and data entry. Under the mentorship of Nancy Marttila in the President's Office, Morgado helped coordinate Mongan's reception for minority house officers in July.

"Rafhel was an integral part of putting the reception together," says Marttila. "He created a database, did the invitations and placed follow-up phone calls. With his help, we pulled off a nice event. Rafhel has been great to work with. He is very polite and pleasant to be around, and he is extremely bright. If he is any measure of the caliber of students participating in the Summer Jobs Program, then we had an excellent group working with us this summer."

Henry Ryan of Partners Human Resources confirms that the group of high school students who worked with the program were eager and interested. "We are very proud of how well this program is running," says Ryan. "We've been doing this for 10 years now, and it really is a win-win situation. Our organization receives much-needed help during the heavy employee vacation months, and these teenagers get an opportunity to earn money and develop some meaningful job skills. They also get exposure to the health care industry, which may ultimately lead them to choose a related profession as their future career.

Partners, along with Bulfinch Temporary Services, works with the city of Boston and the Boston Private Industry Council to attract students from the Boston public school system. According to Ryan, Partners is one of the top companies in the area to hire students for the summer. Partners also is collaborating with the Biomedical Science Careers Project to help improve the Summer Jobs Program in the coming years to make the job experience more meaningful for both the students and Partners hospitals.

For more information about the Summer Jobs Program, call 724-6457.