Brooklyn Recovery Corp (BRC) Student Profile: Sophomore Crystal Fairweather

If you were to look up what time management and discipline mean, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a photo of Medgar Evers College sophomore Crystal Fairweather sitting alongside these definitions. The Business Administration major juggles quite the schedule, especially after being chosen to partake in the Brooklyn Recovery Corp (BRC) program.

The BRC is a program where students enjoy a paid internship, where they spend 15 hours a week learning new skills and are mentored by local entrepreneurs and business leaders, who share with them how and why they started their businesses. When Fairweather was accepted into the BRC program, she was matched up with the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights. It turned out to be the perfect match for her.

“The internship that I’ve been doing—I recognized the pastor right away,” Fairweather recalled. “I worked at a school in District 16 and Reverend [Rashad Raymond] Moore attended that school when he was a child and he would often come back to P.S. 308 to kind of give back. I made a connection with him at the Matching Fair. I greeted Reverend Moore before he could even speak and say who he was. There was a kind of immediate synergy. It felt authentic, both on my end and I think on his end as well when we speak about it. It felt like the right place, decision and thing so that’s kind of where it all started.”

Fairweather’s work with First Baptist Church primarily consists of administrative tasks. She compiles the bulletins for every Sunday service, along with any that take place during the week. Power Point presentations are created for Bible study and any events that may be going on at the church during the week. Fairweather has also made fliers for events happening at First Baptist. Besides carrying a full class load at MEC, the Brooklyn native is a mother of an eight-year-old and a three-year-old and also works a full-time job as a procurement specialist. In this role, she helps and supports roughly 35 to 40 schools in the Brooklyn North area to navigate their purchasing budgets. Throughout all this, Fairweather served on the MEC Student Government Association (SGA) last year, is involved with her older daughter in Girl Scouts, is the secretary for the second consecutive year of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA), and is heavily involved with her congregation over at Emmanuel Baptist Church. With so much on her plate. Fairweather admits her involvement in BRC has taught her some important lessons.

“I think time management is definitely at the top of the list,” she said. “In addition to being a full-time student, I am a full-time mom and I work full-time for the New York City public schools. So adding on this internship and figuring out how to make it work both for me and the church has been a task to say the least.”
Fairweather’s exemplary work in BRC hasn’t gone unnoticed, particularly by MEC Senior Director of Advancement and Strategic Partnerships Peter Holoman.

“Crystal is the personification of BRC program,” Holoman said. “She is engaging. She represents herself and the program well. She offers advice and resources to other interns based on her own internship experience with the BRC as well as the other student leadership roles she holds on campus.”

In learning how to juggle so much, this young MEC undergrad has found leaning into the chaos and moving forward is something that’s enabled her to survive and thrive.

“One way I cope is by remembering a quote by Frederick Douglass in which he said, ‘Without struggle, there is no progress.’,” she said. “I have a to-do list in front of me that is comprised of personal/home, my homework and courses and then I have work. I often just look at it to see what I’m dealing with right now. Then I get a little anxious about it wondering where I begin. And then I realize that the ambition—the goals that I have—are going to take some challenges and there is going to be some struggles. But I know that there is going to be progress at the end. There is an end goal. There is a wish. There is a desire and I just hold onto that.”