In a Brooklyn library, young professionals learn the language of ambition

They had spent long stretches on the train to get to a library in Williamsburg, willing to brave the cold and give part of their weekend to something they hoped would move their future forward.

Volunteering Untapped NYC and The City Tutors had brought together a mix of students, recent graduates, young professionals, and mentors for the January gathering. Kevin Brown, The City Tutors’ program success manager, moved through the room with an easy, commanding presence, drawing people in, easing introductions at each table, and setting a tone that loosened the room quickly. Within minutes, the earnestness people had brought with them pushed the conversation toward harder questions: how to turn an interest into work, how to build relationships that lead somewhere, how to move with more clarity through a professional world that often reveals itself only in fragments.

The room held all kinds of people. Students still trying to understand what fit them. Recent graduates looking for a way forward. Young professionals trying to widen or regain momentum. Others carried experience that could make the next step easier to see.

Nicholas Crawford, a statistics student now at Baruch with a pull toward finance, arrived with interests that had not yet fully resolved into a professional path. When the conversation at his table turned to supply chains, tariffs, and the bullwhip effect, he lit up. The material he had been studying was right there in the work people around him actually did.

A subject he knew now carried a clearer sense of where it could lead.

Across the room, Jason Omoruyi was working through a different kind of question. He had graduated from Baruch into the pandemic and spent the years after trying to build the kind of professional network people are told will form along the way. He had done the outreach, sent the messages, followed up when he could. What he came in looking for that afternoon was a better way to approach the interaction itself.

At his table, people spoke in specifics: how they got in, what mattered early, what still matters now. Omoruyi adjusted in real time, asking clearer questions, following threads further, and staying in the exchange long enough for it to open up. Around him, the same pattern repeated. People tested how to describe what they wanted, listened for where it connected, and picked up language they could use again.

By the end of the afternoon, something had shifted. A half-formed interest could be placed within a field. A set of instincts could take on the outline of a role. A conversation could extend beyond the table.

Crawford and Omoruyi were two among many that Saturday. Around them were others carrying questions about industry, timing, confidence, access, and how to be understood in a professional setting. What changed in the room was proximity to people who could respond in real time, shaping and clarifying what had been taking shape more slowly on their own.

Above them, the city moved through a winter Saturday. Inside the library, people kept asking for help. The room kept meeting them there.