Broadening Her Horizons

Lisa Wiederlight has been a piece to the puzzle in helping address the specific housing needs of people with developmental disabilities, wounded veterans and older adults through her non-profit organization, My Heart’s Home. 

Wiederlight is a former Maryland field hockey student-athlete who helped bring the program its first-ever NCAA National Championship in 1987. What brought her to start her non-profit was her son, Joshua, who was diagnosed with autism. She realized that there was a vast shortage of housing, appropriate support and planned activities to promote socialization and self-actualization for adults with disabilities.

Through My Heart’s Home, Wiederlight is making a difference in the lives of those who suffer from disabilities. However, she’s also providing an opportunity for Maryland student-athletes to gain valuable work experience. 

Francesca Feodorov and Julia Garcia are two student-athletes who have interned with My Heart’s Home in collaboration with Maryland Made's InTERPship Academy. Wiederlight says partnering with her alma mater has made her proud. 

“Both interns are brilliant and very hard-working,” she said. “I felt like we have something in common being athletes at Maryland and understanding that hard work isn’t limited to just sports. You also have to work hard in the classroom and at your job. That's just kind of who Maryland athletes are. We just persevere, and we get things done. I definitely saw that discipline in the athletes.” 

Feodorov is a senior on Maryland’s tennis team and an international student from Romania studying finance. Over the summer, she interned with My Heart’s Home as a Program Development Assistant, assisting with grant funding, financial collaboration for the organization and more. Feodorov was such an asset that Wiederlight extended her internship into the fall semester. 

“For most people, me included, whenever you think about a job in finance, you think about Wall Street, people sitting at a desk and powerful people discussing powerful companies with lots of money,” Feodorov said. “I don't feel like many people think about the aspects of finance actually being able to help individual people and make an impact on a smaller level. This internship really broadened my horizons about how you could actually do that, and finance could be one of those jobs in which you make an impact.” 

Wiederlight took Feodorov to a farm where people with developmental disabilities worked as an introduction to her internship, giving her a vision of what My Heart’s Home strived to become. The hands-on experience allowed Feodorov to understand the issue of how people with disabilities are underserved, rather than sitting in an office reading textbooks or going online and watching videos.

Wiederlight incorporated experiential learning to give context to Feodorov's work. She says that Feodorov was an incredible asset who quickly grasped the goals of My Heart’s Home. She even added that she could be her own independent consultant one day. 

“Francesca is so bright and interested in helping but understands and appreciates the cause,” Wiederlight said. “Whenever you give her something, she appreciates it so much and puts 110% into it. She's very capable to the point where she taught herself how to use a donor database to identify possible donors for us. I don't know of any interns as undergraduates who can teach themselves something like that.”

Feodorov places an exceptionally high value on her internship, as she didn’t fully comprehend how vital such an experience was for landing future jobs in the United States. She also experienced challenges landing one before connecting with the Maryland Made staff and its InTERPship Academy through her academic advisor. 

Feodorov received a few internship offers, but when Wiederlight and My Heart’s Home reached out, she felt differently about the opportunity. 

“It's not really what I expected when I thought of an internship,” Feodorov said. “I expected to sit down, grind it out, work a lot. It had this fun aspect, and I thought that if I were able to start my career with something like this, it would surround me with people who also really care about making a genuinely positive impact on everyone around them.”

As an international student-athlete, Feodorov was required to apply for curricular practical training (CPT) and register for UNIV-099 to be approved to work within the realms of their major off-campus in the U.S. She ran into issues with her application being delayed but said the Maryland Made staff helped tremendously through the process.  

In addition to My Heart’s Home, Wiederlight chairs the Housing and Community Integration Committee for the state of Maryland's Autism Stakeholder Group and serves on the board of the Autism Society of Maryland.

She looks forward to continuing to work with Maryland Made and the InTERPship Academy, which will give student-athletes valuable work experience while helping initiate a great cause. Wiederlight also hopes to work directly with the University of Maryland in the future to address the needs of her non-profit, such as outreach, innovation and finances. She and Feodorov had nothing but good things to say about one another. 

“I’m so lucky to have Lisa as a mentor,” Feodorov said.