[Excitedly] Introducing: Oneca Hitchman

We are extremely excited to introduce you to Oneca Hitchman, an exciting new guest voice/commentator here at Millennials Changing America.

We were super excited to have the opportunity to talk with Sharalyn Hartwell last week, and it is important for us to be able to feature a wide-range of Millennial ideas and insights. We are very much looking forward to sharing Hitchman's commentary.

Here, Oneca shares a bit about her already robust life and career.

Take it away, Oneca.

Throughout my diverse educational and occupational life I have always had a distinct interest in the creativity and communication that the written word lends to collaborative empowerment. A long time student of history, cultural studies, environmental progression, economic development, and international politics, I am currently utilizing my interests and background to create the only primary literary source addressing the societal needs and absent voices of the Millennial generation.

My process thus far has been a wild and winding one, to say the very least. With regard to my educational background, I graduated from Brown University as a triple concentrator with academic honors in Public Private Sector Organizations, American Civilization, and Ethnic Studies, with a focus on International Business and Economic Development in the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora.  I completed my thesis on The Reproduction of Class Stratification in Jamaica after researching Economic Development and Gender Equality on the island, at the University of the West Indies. Later, to contextualize my interest in nonprofit and corporate-based events, I became a classically trained chef and restaurant management graduate from the Institute of Culinary Education. In addition to conventional learning, I became a published slam poetry artist for the Random House/Russell Simmons produced compilation Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, was contributor on Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s young adult social commentary broadcast, Respect!, and proudly managed Soul Cypher, an organization seeking to promote political awareness through lyricism.

After college, I tried to utilize my cosmopolitan background of development, programmatic coordination, writing, and research, to personally grow, aid nationally and internationally focused concerns, and explore a variety of diverse occupational experiences. At Utendahl Capital Partners, the largest African-American owned investment firm in the nation, I executed corporate conferences targeting Community Reinvestment Act shareholders and planned large-scale, organization-based events, nationwide. After working as a Regional Coordinator for Donald J. Trump, and a New Business Research Coordinator for advertising firm Muts&Joy, I became sick of corporate life, discouraged that I had deviated off the path of progressive enlightenment, and suffered a mild quarter-life crisis. As such, after the mini breakdown, I re-ignited internal fires and revived my spirit as an Event Director at public policy research and advocacy organization, Demos. Here I received documented insight into the direct link between education and economic gain and the extent to which my generation’s educational prospects were being hindered. Additionally, I began to understand how, specifically, the greatest economic downturn since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression, was crippling the future of Millennials on a greater scale than any other age bracket nationally.

I decided to create a literary platform that allowed Millennials to speak on their own behalf about political concerns directly affecting them.  I wanted the compilation to provide Millennials the opportunity to change the consequences of past disregard by communicating first-hand experiences, opinions, and suggestions, and then, apply their notably unique experience to the ever-changing present and future culture. After writing a concept and requesting submissions, I received an extraordinary amount of writing samples that I then narrowed down and assembled. With confirmed contributors working diligently on expressing their experience through written word, I asked Justin Rockefeller and Maya Enista, Board member and CEO of Mobilize.org respectively, to write the compilation’s forward and they generously agreed. Maya, with my deepest gratitude, put me in touch with Morley Winograd, who introduced me to Alex Steed and the eager trail of interconnected support has continued at a humbling rate.

Though my life has undergone wonderfully instructive twists and turns, I truly believe (and sincerely pray) that I have found a literary mission that will seamlessly connect the many pieces of my background and be utilized in a way that proves helpful to others.





More with Sharalyn: What do YOU define as Millennial? What events had the most impact on our generational identity?

In my chat with Sharalyn Hartwell (The Examiner's national Gen Y columnist), we discussed the various cut-off dates that are established for who is / who is not considered a Millennial. Sharalyn was born in 1980, which, in Mike and Morley's definition, does not technically qualify (though they address the question "When does one generation end and another begin?" here). According to many other definitions, it does.

Sharalyn commented on being on the older end of the spectrum:

There is almost a division within the generation. For example, I never worked with Internet until I was in college, and my sister [a member of the generation as well] grew up with it throughout her life, and she had it in elementary school. This younger group is very, very aware of The Internet."

She went on:

You can get hung up on figuring out who is a Millennial and who is not, and it becomes inconsequential. I scanned through the [Pew report on Millennials]. One of the things they pointed out was that the parameters are not necessarily categorical, and that they're just trying to find a basis [for commonality].

There is the period effect; how do wars, social movements, and so on impact cohorts depending on which life cycle they're in? For us, there was definition in events like the DotCom rise and fall, 9/11, and this recession.

Some questions:

• There are many definitions regarding what is / is not a Millennial. Which do you adhere to and why?
• Which events do you believe have had the most impact on the formation of our generational identity?
• Are you an older or younger Millennial? What are your views of those on the other end of the spectrum?

Sharalyn Hartwell: The Vanna White of Gen Y on giving thanks and generational self-awareness

It was very much my pleasure to have had the opportunity to chat with Sharalyn Hartwell, a freelance writer and a nationally syndicated columnist for The Examiner on millennial culture and issues. As her Twitter profile suggests, she has been dubbed "The Vanna White of Gen Y," and she has been using her column to offer to millennials a constructive voice which serves - in part - to combat some of the persistently hyperbolic, negative stereotypes regarding the generation.

Mike, Morley and I stumbled upon the column back in November when Sharalyn was running her Gen Y Gives Thanks series, a collection of a series of posts from Millennials on what they are most thankful for. This ultimately serves as an illustration of her take on the generation's values, as well as a deconstruction of ill-informed, negative stereotypes. "Conversations in the media [about millennials] can be quite negative, really reactive. There are a lot of fingers pointed at us," she explained. Hartwell says the "Thanks" series was something that she had initially done for exposure, but as she began receiving responses from members of the generation, she realized "what we were grateful for, and it flew in the face of stereotypes." From there, Hartwell began to write for the the audience, and it became a process of getting to know her own generation.

Sharalyn and I also discussed, among other things, millennials' awareness of its own generational categorization. I asked Sharalyn: "Do most millennials even know that there is such a thing a the 'millennial generation' or 'Gen Y'?"

"No," she responded. "There is very little [generational] self-awareness. In observing and interacting with various social media channels, you see that people are extreme in one way or another. Young people are either very in touch with these types of conversations, or they're completely out of touch with them. The dichotomy is pretty stark, too; there are very few people in the middle."

I found this particularly interesting, as this is a conclusion that I came to when I went on the Millennials Changing America tour in late 2008. The genesis of me deciding to go to 35 cities to talk with Millennials about their take on the generation why my thinking, "OK. Here are all of these older people talking about this so-called 'Millennial Generation', but how come I've never heard of it?" And as I traveled around and spoke with members of the generation, I found that far more often than not, members of the generation had not heard of the terms "Millennial" or "Gen Y," and apparently this persists. I might suggest that now that Pew has released its How Millennial Are You quiz, and that since it appears to have proliferated the social media scape, that perhaps more Millennials have become familiar with the term. However, in my experience, all of those that I have seen report their "Millennial" results are early Millennials (late 20s), Gen Xers, or older.

Do find some time to take a look at Sharalyn's column if you have not already, and definitely spend some time with her Gen Y Gives Thanks, series. We look forward to talking with her some more soon. 

17 to 25-year-olds: Take a look at Generation18 Speaks!

From Generation18:

We're inviting young people all across the country (between the ages of 17 and 25) to apply for one of these cameras. Apply on or before April 12, and if you are selected, you'll have a camera for four months to film a series of short video pieces (3-5 minutes) about issues that matter to you, and to film youth taking action from marches to group meetings and from handing out fliers to storming city hall and everything in between.
 
We'll be putting your videos online to let your voices speak to the country about our generation, and in the fall we'll release a documentary that brings all of these stories together.

Click here to apply now for Generation18 Speaks!

You can also follow us on twitter at @generation18

More questions regarding the millennial career-path

We had such a great response to our jobs/careers related question in the Think Tank that we have gone on and asked another:

What does the [millennial's] ideal organization/employer look like?