Scholarships

On Monday last week Brian Kiplinger and Barry Kuzmickas presented scholarships at the Strongsville High School Senior Salute.  A total of $21,000 in scholarships were awarded in 13 scholarships.  5 were to participants in the CBI (formerly Connections) program, 7 to Strongsville High School Seniors, and one Strongsville resident attending St Ignatius.

Eddy Bond Memorial Baseball Game

The Eddy Bond Memorial Baseball Game Outing will be on July 22nd.  We'll be in the Paul Davis Pennant District.  Tickets are $40, and include the all you can eat buffet that is open until 1 hour after the first pitch.

Speaker

Julie Yelk of the FBI spoke about her career path and current recruiting work for the FBI’s Cleveland office.

She grew up in Massillon, Ohio, with no law enforcement background, studied psychology/pre-law at Mount Union, and discovered the FBI through an internship opportunity. That internship led to an 18-year career that included intelligence analysis, becoming a special agent, moving around the country, overseas deployments, undercover work, criminal cases, and service as senior team leader of Cleveland’s hostage/crisis negotiation team.

Her main message was that the FBI hires far beyond special agents. She said the Bureau has 568 job titles, with agents making up only a small portion of the workforce. Needed backgrounds include accounting, finance, law, engineering, computer science, data science, IT, linguistics, nursing, counseling, automotive repair, forensic examination, and administrative support.

She highlighted several opportunities:

1. Honors Internship Program — for college students, especially sophomores, juniors, and graduate students. Applicants should plan about a year ahead because of the background-check process.
2. Collegiate Hiring Initiative — an entry-level path for recent graduates.
3. Special Agent Path — applicants generally must be 23–37, have a degree and two years of full-time work experience, pass a physical fitness test, and meet drug-policy and background requirements.
4. Support Careers — including analysts, victim specialists, nurses, IT specialists, automotive technicians, and administrative specialists.
5. Citizens Academy — an 8- to 12-week community program that introduces local leaders to FBI work.

Yelk said cybercrime has been the biggest change in her career, with Cleveland now having both criminal cyber and national security cyber squads. She also discussed the FBI’s role in federal investigations, international embassy-based offices, physical fitness standards, employee support systems, and the emotional difficulty of working cases involving violence and victims.

A memorable story came from early in her career, when she was on weekend duty in Washington, D.C., and received a call about Somali pirates taking the Maersk Alabama hostage — the incident later portrayed in Captain Phillips.