Successful media producer trades career for inner city education

NEW YORK CITY – Thursday evening around 50 men and women dressed in their Sunday best gathered at the Dillon Gallery of art in Chelsea.

At the private event, they sipped expensive wine and sampled finely made hors d'ouerves. They casually viewed the exhibit, but not just to be cultured. They congregated to support an organization called Operation Exodus Inner City, an after school program in Washington Heights.


"I empower the parents to be more active in their children's learning process," said Tatiana Mahoney, parent coordinator at OEIC, who aids parents in raising their children in a safe and engaging environment.

According to Mahoney, Operation Exodus Inner City (OEIC) was founded in 1988 in response to the desperate needs of children in Upper Manhattan. Today OEIC provides a refuge for around sixty children from ages five through 18 within their community of largely Dominican Republic background.


The highly successful tutoring and mentoring program reports on its Internet site that it sees 100 percent of its high school aged students gain their diploma and 75 percent continue on to higher education.

Many indispensible volunteers staff the operation, including Mahoney.

Mahoney came to New York during her college years to study acting for a summer but ended up enrolling at NYU to study video production.

Soon thereafter, she gained an internship with Walter Cronkite, who is best known as an anchorman for the CBS Evening News, which led to her becoming a video producer at CBS for 10 years. After that, she moved to Parents magazine to be an associate editor for two years.


In 2007, Mahoney lost her mother and left her career in media production to return to OEIC where she had briefly volunteered during her first years in New York.


"I wouldn't say that I sacrificed my career because I see that God doesn't waste anything," she said.


According to Mahoney, her mother was a woman who deeply valued education. After her death, Mahoney realized she wanted to work with parents to enable them to give their children the same education that her mother had made possible for her.

"I just thought it would be a way to honor my mother," she said. "I felt like this was something that I really wanted to do and God really opened the door wide."


The open door that Mahoney spoke of was the position of parent coordinator offered to her by Matt Mahoney, the executive director of OEIC and her husband.

"When Tatiana quit her job and then was ready to jump back into work and wanted something part-time, that's when I thought of the idea: I should drag her in here and have her out with the parents because that's a big issue," he said. "She just jumped right in and took over and it was great."

For more information about Operation Exodus Inner City, check out their website at http://www.operationexodus.org.