Business & Tech
Shelter Island Woman Launches Site To Help Overeducated Unemployed
A local Shelter Island young woman helps her peers find jobs, and self-worth.
Sometimes a degree from an Ivy League school is not all it was supposed to be cracked up to be.
Just ask Shelter Island's Alexandra Fairweather and her partner, Eric Goodman of Great neck, who have teamed up to help well-educated, tech-savvy and highly-motivate Ivy League graduates who just can't find a job.
To that end, the duo will launch a members-only website, Ivy Untapped, to help the jobless Ivy League grads, known as "Generation Y/Millenials."
Statistics indicated that recent grads are more likely to work as waiters than chemists, and that, according to the Huffington Post, “53.6 percet of bachelor’s degree holders under the age of 25" last year in 2012 were jobless or underemployed."
The website will be unveiled at a by-invitation-press-and-potential-members launch event at the Yale Club in Manhattan on Nov. 19.
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Ivy Untapped will give members the chance to “create profile pages, collaborate, brainstorm, and work together to untap potential and, ultimately, create opportunities from within,” said Goodman.
“Our activity will not only exist online, but also offline through in-person events and consultations where Ivy League students and alumni can . . . meet successful entrepreneurs and eventually develop their own entrepreneurial opportunities in an environment that supports creative and out-of-the-box thinking," Fairweather said.
The co-founders plan to visit Ivy League campuses to help recruit membership and meet with administration, educators and career advisors to solicit mentors, speakers and workshop facilitators.
In addition, the plan is to suggest that the Ivys develop formal, on-campus courses and counseling opportunities to help guide students for after-college career building.
“We know that not everyone can be the next Mark Zuckerberg,” Goodman said; Zuckerberg founded Facebook at a young age.
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“And not everyone even wants to do that," Fairweather said. "But a lot of people want to have something of their own, something they love and believe in and can develop into a successful business, whether it’s small, medium or large.”
She added, “We’re starting with the community we know best, and we’ll learn, from and with them, how to make the whole network work best."
Eventually, the plan is to expand their project to include an all-inclusive College Untapped, as well as High School Untapped.
The name for the site was chosen, they said, because so many of their peers are unsure of how to tap their professional potential.
Fairweather is also the stepdaughter of artist John Chamberlain, a filmmaker, former director of an art gallery, current self-employed art investment advisor, and co-manager, with her mom, of the exhibition and sale of Chamberlain’s work.
She and Goodman are also the co-publishers of a new print and online culture and lifestyle quarterly magazine, Fairweather.
Goodman has worked as a day trader and classical pianist but now is employed as a hedge fund analyst.
Of their jobless peers, Fairweather said, "“Separately and together, Eric and I know a lot of smart, talented, motivated people. Some of them are brilliant. Yet many of them have low-level jobs or no job. They’re unhappy and discouraged and very concerned about what will become of them. They feel like failures and the real game hasn’t even begun. Eric and I were both raised with ‘you can do it’ attitudes and are comfortable with the work of making things happen."
She added, "We also seem to have boundless energy, which we believe is a byproduct of believing in yourself. We have the ability to facilitate success and we’re making the time to share that. How could we not?”
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