SUCCESS STORY
Laura Burton: "At Goodwill, we take barriers and turn them around into positives."

December 11, 2008

Before coming to Goodwill,Laura Burton, Admissions Coordinator, was a nurse working with terminally ill patients.

"I did nursing for so long that I didn’t have other skills, so I volunteered at the South Beach Homeless Resource Center to get more," Laura explains.

"The director of the Center saw something in me, and hired me as a counselor. Then I became a case manager, and that started me on my path."

When Laura first came to us six years ago, she applied for a Career Advisor position. Again, the people who interviewed her recognized something in her that she didn’t see in herself, and offered her an instructor position. Laura’s held several titles since then, including Career Advisor, and she combines all of this experience into her role as Admissions Coordinator, working with local agencies to get their clients into our programs.

Laura continues to teach here, teaming with instructor David Estrada to run professional development classes that focus on communication skills, writing resumes and cover letters, making good first impressions and dealing with conflict. “Any compliments I get from people go to David. He first trained me, shared his skills with me and taught me everything," Laura says. She credits a number of other people with supporting her along the way.

"Linda Oziel, Program Coordinator, showed me the ropes. She really sat down with me and explained things. Also, back when we were short on Career Advisors, I had a huge caseload that included the warehouse, the docks, Fillmore and Haight."

She names Bella Fontelar and Mirsada Causevic, Assistant Processing Managers, and Jessie Edwards, Operations Manager, as people who helped her get through that time. "They were all so willing to work with me, and because of all the support they gave, I was never behind on my caseload," Laura explains.

Life was not always easy for Laura, nor were people always this supportive. "I have seven sisters," she says. "They always told me I was ugly, stupid, an idiot. I thought they were saying those things to me for my own good. I didn't realize it was abusive. My dad died when I was 11 years old, and I dealt with it by eating. At one point, I weighed 490 pounds. I went to NA and AA meetings to help me understand how addiction works. I may not have a criminal or drug background, but addiction is addiction. I was emotionally abused, and I used eating to cope with it."

Laura continues, "before coming to Goodwill I used to be painfully shy. It took someone to believe in me to show me that I was okay." When people started believing in me, it helped my self-esteem and allowed me to make changes. That's what Goodwill does for people, we take barriers and turn them around into positives."

"People look at me and think I was always like what they see now—that it was easy for me. But this has been a long struggle for me to get here, and I feel that if I've been given this gift, why not share it with others?"

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