Volunteer Spotlight: Jaden Piggee
Jaden began her first term as an AmeriCorps VISTA with FACES for the Future in June 2025. She received a laptop, a giant cardboard box, and an ambiguous assignment: “Organize the alumni files.” Jaden admitted that she had no idea how challenging this seemingly simple assignment would be. The massive box she received was filled with binders, notebooks, and paper files containing data on alumni dating back to FACES’ very first cohort in 2000, well before most of these records had ever touched high-speed internet.
Jaden remembers sitting there and staring at the box as the realization set in: she would be organizing more than two decades of program history that had sat untouched in storage for years. The tangible data was only part of the challenge. Alumni information was also scattered across the organization’s coalition database and a shared Google Drive maintained by VISTAs, program directors, and coordinators over the years. Names didn’t always match, entries were missing, and there was no way to easily segment alumni by year, program, or location. Some people had married, changed their names, moved to different states, and aged out of the .edu email addresses FACES had on file.
So, Jaden went looking for them. She combed through LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, cross-referenced old program photos, and leaned on the institutional memory of FACES founder Dr. Tomás Magaña to confirm who was who. Much of the work came down to individually reaching out to alumni with questions like, “I found a photo of you from FACES. Do you know where this person from your cohort ended up? Would you want to reconnect and share your story?” For many alumni, these conversations served as a reminder that the program had helped shape where they are today, and that FACES had never forgotten about them.
Between the digitized files and existing records, Jaden has helped identify and organize information for somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 alumni. The information is now ready to be migrated into a centralized database organized by program, year, and location, and connected to FACES’ newsletter platform. This will allow the organization to work from a cohesive alumni list rather than relying on tangled and disconnected spreadsheets.
Now in her second term, Jaden is using this information to support a fundraising campaign for FACES during a significant budget loss this year. She is finally able to segment outreach by cohort and connect directly with alumni. The work has also given FACES a clearer picture of its impact over time, including how many students participated in the program each year and where those students are today.
The database is still a work in progress, and Jaden continues to fill in gaps as she approaches the end of her service term. However, the scaffolding is now in place. Through her VISTA service, Jaden has transformed years of scattered records into a foundation that FACES can continue building upon long after her service ends.
