Masami Dustin is a 21’ Business Administration graduate with a focus in Management and minor in Psychology. He was a Paul Scholar and a Dean’s Ambassador at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at UNH. The Dean’s Ambassadors are students nominated by faculty and staff to serve on the student advisory board to the Dean and represent Paul College at business and alumni events as well as provide feedback to the Dean. Additionally, Masami worked as a Business Ethics Journal Assistant with a UNH marketing professor. The journal focused on the many facets of Corporate Responsibility, including quantitative issues. Masami was also a Changemaker Collaborative Coach where he mentored incoming first-year or transfer students who are passionate about making a change and implementing sustainable practices in their daily lives. Masami graduated with Dean’s Highest Honors and was the recipient of several awards including UNH’s prestigious Hood Achievement Award which is awarded to the senior man who shows the greatest promise through character, scholarship, leadership, and usefulness to humanity, a Bronze Sustainability Award, and a Paul Pride award.
During his time at UNH, Masami also participated in the Semester in the City where he interned in Boston with FamilyAid, the city’s largest service provider for homeless families. Masami credits this experience for being “absolutely transformative.” When he was accepted into the program, Masami had already been passionate about many social issues but was enlightened on how critical the nonprofit business sector is in initiating widespread social change. He said, “I wanted to leverage business somehow to create change. FamilyAid gave me critical experience in learning about notable issues happening in communities close to my hometown and how to realistically start fighting against them on an institutional level.” His internship with FamilyAid developed into a full-time career after graduation where he is focusing on the agency’s strategic operations.
Since starting his full-time role with FamilyAid, Masami has been supporting the executive office’s strategic operations through management of project logistics and external constituent stewardship. One project Masami is closely supporting is a multi-year, systems-level assessment which applies the evidence-based Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) to convene key stakeholders throughout Boston to map the city’s existing service system for homeless children in families. The goal is to ultimately identify system gaps and, with the commitment of the 100-150 project participants, develop and implement pragmatic action plans to minimize these gaps and improve the overall access and coordination of services for accompanied homeless children. Masami will act as the head liaison for FamilyAid, the coordinating organization and project grantee, and as an administrative support to the 8-member Executive Committee that is guiding the project’s work to coordinate and implement all elements of the project.
One of Masami’s greatest passions is social justice. He is extremely empathetic to everyone no matter what background or lifestyle they come from. He states, “being an Asian-American, I’ve always made a point to continue learning about other racial inequities outside of my own ethnicity.” Masami can frequently be found researching social issues including underprivileged areas of the world where resources such as health care and education are lacking or citizens are persecuted based on their sexuality, skin color or other factors. Masami credits his research for the reason behind doing the Semester in the City program.
Learn more about how you can build skills for change by participating in the Changemaker Collaborative programs here. Learn more about Family Aid Boston here.
