Introducing our Volunteer of the Month, Kasra Omid-Zohoor

Bravo to our newest volunteer of the month, Kasra Omid-Zohoor. Kasra started volunteering in our Sunday Drop-in Tutoring program in 2012, soon after moving to San Francisco. He had just finished grad school, where he taught classes as a teaching assistant for two years. Looking to keep teaching and connect with his community, he says he “sought out the Pirate Supply Store like Aladdin on his quest for the lamp.”

Introducing our Volunteer of the Month, Kasra Omid-ZohoorIn his free time, Kasra enjoys running, reading, and traveling. He is also a Bay Area native, having attended elementary school in the Bay Area before moving away to other states. He plotted his return and came back to complete his BS, MS, and PhD at Stanford University. In that time, he has watched the Bay Area grow and change and hopes we can build it even stronger—for everyone.
 
Kasra counts himself as one of those high-flying tech workers, and seeks to leverage his role working at Apple to do good. While some of the news he reads about tech remind him of his grandmother’s stories of foreign soldiers occupying her childhood home in Iran (“They ate everything, they took everything, they broke everything, and then they left”), Kasra strives to make a positive dent in the universe.
 
Our Sunday Drop-In Tutoring staff tell us he does exactly that. “We love Kasra! He is an absolute rock and the resident math specialist of the Sunday Drop-in Tutoring program. Week in and week out, students with the toughest math homework know to go straight to Kasra. His patience and kindness never fail to put students at ease and give them the confidence to work through whatever they’re stuck on, whether it’s simple addition or AP Calculus.” Staff aren’t the only ones lining up to honor Kasra—his fellow long-time Sunday tutors also urged us to make him June’s Volunteer of the Month!
 
Kasra has advice to share for new volunteer tutors: “Bring a book! Nothing builds a student’s confidence like seeing you return to reading, trusting that they can do the next one themselves. Reading a book also shows students that learning is a lifelong journey rather than a chore for young people only. Lead by example!”
 
The 826 family is so grateful to have a volunteer like Kasra—keep up the good work, we can’t wait to see what you do next!
 
Read more about our previous Volunteers of the Month.