Spotlight on Diana Hernandez
From the outside Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas may seem “low key,” but behind the scenes there are a lot of moving parts. One of the people who keeps these moving parts flowing is match support supervisor Diana Hernandez.
A 4-year BBBS veteran, Diana came to the agency after interning at Texas Health and Human Services. “I’d heard about the organization while there and had some families connected to both groups,” Diana said. “I started reading about BBBS. I really liked the goals of the agency and applied for a position.”
Diana is responsible for supporting the Match Support Specialists at BBBS – the team who oversee and facilitate all of BBBS’ mentoring relationships. “I’m there to support and encourage the team,” Diana continued. “I assign new matches to specialists, answer questions, oversee schedules and help balance the workload.”
It can be an extensive workload as staff are tasked with overseeing hundreds of mentoring matches and preparing numerous reports. As a supervisor Diana understands the workload and is there to help. “One of the skills needed for this job is that of being super organized,” Diana explained. “I work on making sure there is a system in place to help staff and communicate with the team to make sure no one is overwhelmed.”
Having support systems in place will be very important in the coming months as the department has challenged themselves to try to make 140 new matches by the end of the calendar year.
“I know we can do it,” Diana said. “And we are working to make the challenge fun, rewarding the team with prizes along the way as we achieve our goals.”
With all the hard work comes a lot of satisfaction. “I get satisfaction from hearing the stories of our Littles. For example, when a Little doesn’t have a positive female role model in her house, but I hear that her new Big Sister is fulfilling that role in her life, or I hear from a mom how a Little is doing so much better since being matched with a Big Brother or Sister. That keeps me going. I know we are making a difference.”
When she’s not at BBBS, Diana enjoys spending time with her own two children – Julieta, age 8 and Israel, age 5 – and her husband, Ever. “We enjoy going to the park, playing board games and having movie nights,” she said. Diana also spends free time helping youth outside of BBBS as the youth coordinator for her church.
