Em Eason
This month’s installment of Beam’s Staff Spotlight series features our Director of Industry and Externship, Em Eason. In this role, they facilitate the placement of young people in summer and school year employment. Em also holds and maintains relationships with our community members like CBO’s, school administrations, and more. Additionally, Em speaks to young people that participate in our programs to find out what their interests are, using that information to place youth into internships and worksites; that align with what they would like to pursue in the future. Em says, “I kind of directly hold and facilitate the job experiences that young people in our community are having - a lot of times for the first time. And holding doors open for them in industries that are historically gate kept from a lot of people, especially from young people.”
WLG 2022 Graduation
Em at UASDC with WLG Fall 2022
Em holds a Bachelor of Art in contemporary art education from Sarah Lawrence college. Before becoming a full time employee at Beam Center, Em worked at Beam Camp as a fabrication specialist, later at the wood and metal shops. Em says the first time they worked at Beam Camp they had a realization that shaped their trajectory and shaped what they are pursuing as a career. “When I went to Beam Camp, and I was watching teenagers learn how to weld, I realized that giving young people the means of production was an extraordinary form of mobility. It actually allows for social and economic mobility in a way that I just couldn't have understood before kind of watching this happen.” Em also adds that Beam Center and Beam Camp allow youth to have “autonomy and agency” in what they are learning. “When you open up spaces where you take young people seriously and you treat them as peers, there's something that changes I think, cognitively.” Em says they have not found a better way to help break the “exploitation or oppression that…exists in these really nefarious ways” in our lives. “I haven't really found a better model for subverting those systems than doing work like this.”
Em’s favorite part of working at Beam Center is when they are able to create something new if needed to better serve the young people with whom we work. For instance, after completing our Fall 2022 Apprenticeship, a young person named Jordan expressed an interest in exploring painting and working with different mediums. We are not yet partnered with a particular community-based organization that helps youth develop their skills as a visual artist. However, Em took that and created a new internship here at Beam Center. Jordan interned with Tim Fite, a visual artist and staff member at Beam Center. Tim guided Jordan throughout his internship, and Jordan created a painting that now hangs on the walls of Beam Center.
Jordan with his painting
Tim and Jordan
Outside of Beam, Em maintains a practice as a metal worker and a ceramicist. Em says, “I really enjoy ceramics for the kind of meditation on water evaporating at different rates.” In addition to these pursuits, Em is a full time student at CUNY School of Professional Studies, earning their master’s degree in Youth Studies. Now in their final semester of the program, Em speaks about making the decision to pursue youth studies during their time at Beam Camp. Their graduate research explores how nonbinary youth express their gender identities in languages other than English.
We are grateful to Em for all the knowledge they bring into Beam and for their commitment to supporting young people. Leave a comment below to thank them for the work they are doing for youth across NYC.
