From the Shriver Job Corps Newsletter—
Shriver Job Corps Center (Devens, MA) has certainly had its fair share of exceptional students with great success stories to match their accomplishments. Alex Segar-Reid is a former student who has a story that fits the description of “Exceptional”.
Born in Ethiopia, Alex Segar-Reid immigrated to the United States and was adopted by a family in Vermont. On June 24th, 2008, she was enrolled as a student at Shriver and took the UBC Carpentry program as her trade. After successfully completing Carpentry, Alex went on to take the IUPAT Painting program and was successful at completing that as well.
By all accounts, her instructors, Mr. Basilio from Carpentry and Mr. Gomes from Painting, both praised Alex for being a “Superstar” student. Upon exiting Shriver as a completer, Alex got a job as a laborer and continued working at that job for a year before being accepted into DC-35 (Boston) as an IUPAT Painting apprentice in the Commercial Painting program.
Shortly after becoming an apprentice, Alex was nominated for the BOOT award. This is an award that all of Job Corps, nationally participates in. Her presentation and her story earned her the award. There is only one person in the entire country that gets the BOOT award and Alex did it. Meanwhile, she began working for the John W. Egan Co as a commercial painter.
An odd coincidence that happened while she was working there, was that the current IUPAT Painting Instructor at Shriver, Mr. Yost also worked for JW Egan as an industrial painting Foreman at the time and they actually worked on some of the same projects. At the time, Mr. Yost was uneducated about Job Corps and truthfully, didn’t know of the programs existence. But after becoming an instructor, he realized the accomplishments of Alex and so many other students like her.
Having gone through the IUPAT apprenticeship himself, Mr. Yost knows firsthand what it takes to complete, it takes a lot of hard work and determination, and that is exactly what Alex has on her side. Alex Segar-Reid completed her Apprenticeship with the IUPAT on Wednesday May 18th 2016, and is now earning $34 an hour in her wage and a benefits package worth $27 an hour on top of the wage.
Alex still has room to grow into her career so it is expected that her success story is not over. Captured in this picture, taken at her graduation ceremony are: from left to right, IUPAT FTI-NE’s Director of training- Mr. Eric Redding, Alex Segar-Reid, ML MacDonald Painting Co.’s SuperintendentMr. Roger Kemmit (Alex’s Boss), and IUPAT Field Coordinator-( formerly Alex’s IUPAT Painting instructor at Shriver) Mr. Alan Gomes.
Congratulations Alex!