Matthew Mahoney ’92 Teaches How to Find a Profession With Meaning

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Isabel Lu

As a high school senior in nearby Bridgewater, New Jersey, and with a mother who works at the University, I have been exposed to the Princeton community by attending concerts, student dance performances, and the like. Recently, I learned the meaning of Princeton’s unofficial motto, “In the nation’s service and the service of humanity,” while working for Matthew Mahoney ’92.

Since February, I have volunteered at the New York City-based nonprofit Open Hands Legal Services. Open Hands provides free legal assistance to those who cannot afford or access it. Founded in 2009 by a group of Christian attorneys, the organization has helped thousands fight immigration, housing eviction, or civil battles by creating mobile assistance centers and conducting “know your rights” seminars at shelters and soup kitchens around the city.

While at an assistance center, which the organization calls Legal Aid Desks, I saw attorneys help an immigrant understand and respond to recent changes in her apartment building policies that could threaten her residence.

In addition to supporting the legal aid desks, I write grant applications alongside Mahoney, the executive director. He leads a team of attorneys and volunteers who help approximately 500 New Yorkers annually.

“As a junior in high school, I met the teacher of the year and was inspired because the teacher believed I could also become a teacher,” Mahoney said.

Then at Princeton, Mahoney completed the Program in Teacher Preparation and entered the education sector, where he saw firsthand the pervasive injustice within the system; how a family’s income often correlates to the quality of schooling a child receives. He found many students repulsed by schools because they lacked adequate support and funding.

After a year of teaching in England, Mahoney became a public school teacher in the Bronx at M.S. 52 Luisa Dessus Cruz in 1993. While in the Bronx, he recognized that there was no clear trajectory or consistency in the education pathway. In 1999, Mahoney transitioned into nonprofit work at an after-school program for kids.

In 2019, when the executive director of Open Hands, Kathleen Slocum, was preparing to leave, she recruited Mahoney. He felt called to Open Hands after seeing how immigrants in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York were treated in the legal system.

Mahoney says he has found nonprofit work to be “greatly satisfying, especially because of the large impact it can have,” and encourages all to consider it.

I found Mahoney’s unwavering commitment to giving back to his community inspiring, and it has shown me that there are other roads outside the conventional career pathways that can be rewarding.

In addition, working with Mahoney has taught me to think critically about our strategies for different foundation grant applications. For example, when applying for a foundation grant that we had previously been rejected from, Mahoney prompted me to discern a different strategy by looking through the foundation’s recent newsletter. Through research, I was able to relate our mission to detailed accounts the foundation gave of people they had assisted and underscore how our work aligns with their values.

Above all, he has taught me to use compassion in my work. Hearing him describe his reasonings for entering the nonprofit sector has taught me that fighting the good fight is attainable and not something I have to fantasize about as some job I can have in a perfect world where corruption does not exist. But rather, there are no excuses, and I must look in the mirror and wonder how my work and life are going to make the world a better place.

“In the nation's service and the service of humanity” is exemplified by Mahoney and his team every day.

Isabel Lu is a high school student and the daughter of a Princeton staff member. To learn more about Open Hands, their work, or to donate, visit openhandslegalservices.org.