Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex DeFronzo.
Alex, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My path to today started when I was twelve years old. My mom kept me out of trouble by keeping me busy, so she enrolled me in the free sailing-after-school program at Piers Park. I had never been on a sailboat or on Boston Harbor, and I immediately fell in love with both.
When I was a teen I worked as an instructor in the program. Sailing is a very team-oriented activity that creates deep bonds between people. Every day I learned from mentors, peers, and students who were different from me cognitively, physically, ethnically, relationally, and culturally. We went through a formative experience together, navigating to the Harbor Islands, surviving torrential squalls, jumping off piers and swimming ashore, repairing our fleet of boats, we did it all. It was an ideal adolescence where we were oblivious to anything except our water-faring tribe. At Piers Park, I came to understand that I loved learning, teaching, and working with people.
In 2007 I left the program and moved to Lowell. There I met my beautiful wife, earned a college degree, worked as a paralegal, and became an advocate and activist for accessible public higher education. In 2011 I started my 1L at New England School of Law, hoping to work in public interest/child welfare. My father died that year after a long battle with renal cell carcinoma; kidney cancer that had metastasized to his hand, brain, lungs, and spine. He was otherwise young and healthy which made his last few months especially difficult. At that same time, my immediate family and I experienced several additional traumas. The subsequent pain created an empathy that directed me back toward the nonprofit sector and toward service. I came to realize that I was not suited for lawyering and left NESL to begin work in the field of human services with the Northeastern Family Institute. I supervised a group home of 24 children that were coping with the stresses of abuse and neglect. At the same time, I began to study public administration at Suffolk University and found joy in leading nonprofit organizations.
Early in 2017, I learned that the organization I loved most, Piers Park Sailing, was in a dire financial position with no money and significant debt. At risk of closing altogether, many of my former mentors, peers, and students from the center banded together and the community in East Boston rallied to save the program. I started as the Executive Director in the Spring, and it has been a season I will never forget.
Has it been a smooth road?
I was born in Boston, Massachusetts a cisgender, heterosexual male of European descent. My father was born in Boston, my mother in Winthrop. They raised me and my sister in a loving home. My wife, a special education teacher, is brilliantly smart, supportive, generous, and kind. The bumps in my road are internalized only.
Every success in life is achieved through enduring and overcoming struggle, but struggle is relative. Any person who is so fortunate to know that they have food to eat, a roof over their head, safety and security, and people around them who want them to prosper is (from my perspective) responsible for using that privilege to ensure others have the same access to achieve.
This is part of the reason that I feel so at home in East Boston. East Boston is a refreshingly unique neighborhood of actively engaged people, willing to endure all manner of struggle to make our community the best it can possibly be – for everyone. This is a learned tradition from our ancestors here, who paved the way for the community processes that exist across the city today.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Piers Park Sailing Center – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Piers Park Sailing Center is a community-based charitable nonprofit organization that serves all people; children, adults, students, veterans, seniors, people of all levels of ability. We teach sailing, provide marine education, serve free lunches, mentor youth, a little bit of everything. Our mission is inclusive empowerment and we strive to make it as accessible as possible.
I am most proud of the fact that 100% of the instructors that teach here learned in the program as children. None of us would have been sailors without this program. That sets us apart.
If you go to other similar organizations you will find staff members that grew up at Piers Park. We build a diverse group of really qualified teachers, mentors, and leaders, and they spread across the city to create a new world of enrichment and make what has historically been exclusive and elitist into a sport for everyone.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
For me, there is no place better to live than Boston, Massachusetts.
If we can make it that way for all of the city’s residents, the only thing I’ll have to complain about is the snow. Secretly I love the snow anyway.
Pricing:
- US Sailing Certification for adults is $650
Contact Info:
- Address: Piers Park Sailing Center
95 Marginal St. East Boston, MA 02128 - Website: https://piersparksailing.org
- Phone: 617-561-6677
- Email: adefronzo@piersparksailing.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/piersparksailing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pierspark/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pierspark
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/piers-park-sailing-center-boston
Image Credit:
C. Merfeld.
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