Sam Tabory
B.A. Alumnus
Biography
Pencils of Promise, New York City and Guatemala City
After graduating from Tulane, Sam took a nine month contracted position as a project director with Amigos de las Américas, a Houston based community development and youth leadership organization working in Ecuador. Amigos partners directly with Plan International Ecuador to bring youth leadership programming to rural communities. For the first five months Sam split time between New Orleans and Ecuador, transitioning to living in Ecuador full-time for the last four months of the contract. Recently, Sam has made the transition to a year-long contracted position as Guatemala Project Manager with Pencils of Promise, a New York based non-profit focused on school construction and community engagement programming. He works with construction managers, community leaders, the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, and other regional non-profits in an effort to design and implement high-quality and sustainable community development programming.
Sam reflects on his LAST experience…
Why did you choose to major in Latin American Studies?
I sought out Tulane and its Stone Center for Latin American Studies because I knew that I was ultimately looking to work in Latin America on issues related to international development policy and practice.
How has your background in LAST helped you since graduation?
The undergraduate LAST program gave me the credentials and intellectual tools I needed to better understand the social, economic, and political contexts in which I’ve been living and working. Without the academic training I received at Tulane, I wouldn’t be as desirable a candidate to internationally focused non-profits, but more importantly, I simply wouldn’t be as equipped to operate effectively in the region.
In hindsight, what would you have done differently as a LAST major?
If I were do anything different as a LAST major, I maybe would have concentrated my interests a little more heavily on one research topic or another, but part of the fun of being a LAST major is that you have access to so many fields of study related to Latin America.
