Alexa Maltby ’18 | Penn State College of Health and Human Development

An internship led a unique path to the Association of American Law Schools

When Alexa Maltby ’18 was a senior at Penn State, she curated a unique internship experience at the Youth Service Bureau (YSB), an organization dedicated to ensuring children, youth, and families have every opportunity to reach their full potential.

Alexa knew from previous internships that she was interested in non-profit administration, which led her to take full advantage of the opportunity. During her year at YSB, she gained firsthand experience working with leadership, staff, and most directly with the bureau’s assistant director. This allowed her to understand the ins and outs of a non-profit organization.

Her experience at YSB set the foundation for a career in the non-profit sector. Today, Alexa is a member services and project manager at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in Washington, D.C. AALS has the dual responsibility of serving law schools and their deans as their institutional membership organization, and individual law school faculty and administrators as their learned society.

The team is small, and Alexa wears many hats. She mostly works at the crux of the meetings and technology teams, focusing on providing member services. Her responsibilities include putting on conferences and providing online resources. She also supports the human resources team by identifying and interviewing candidates for the organization.

An HDFS degree can be applied in so many different fields and organizations. While working in non-profit administration might have seemed unconventional compared to her classmates, Alexa knew that’s what she was interested in. That’s why her biggest advice for current students is to “follow your own path and expose yourself to your interests as often and early as possible.”

This profile was published December 2021.