Meet Dr. James Agtuca, OneStar | VISTA Spotlight

In our VISTA Spotlight, our OneStar AmeriCorps VISTA members share in their own words about the transformative experience of serving with nonprofits and agencies in Texas working to eliminate poverty.

By summer 2023's end, I was discreetly laid off from one of the nation's most profitable pharmaceutical conglomerates after five years of service. In spite of continuous job seeking surrounding the layoff, I remained largely unemployed until having discovered AmeriCorps and its service opportunities through VISTA come spring 2024. While daily applying to companies and hunting for positions both within and beyond the confines of medical practice during the in-between, very little did I know that my time practicing explicitly as a clinical specialty pharmacist had quietly come to an end. In hindsight, a large portion of my everyday prayers throughout 2022 consisted of asking for something far more meaningful to do with my life, my education, my passions and strengths, etc. Perhaps this explains why I ultimately considered the loss of employment more liberating than disappointing, especially seeing as my days of mundane regularity, working from sunrise to sunset with little appreciation and no recognition expressed by company leadership, had become a thing of the past. Upon guidance by CAVALRY's founder, Dr. Tracie Edmond of San Antonio, TX (and learning of the non-profit's acclaim as one of America's most forward-thinking project management experiential programs), there was no doubt that I found what I had long been hoping for - the unicorn opportunity to bridge my longstanding professional experience with innovative philanthropic ventures. And since day one serving as CAVALRY's Partnership and Outreach VISTA through OneStar, not even a second has passed in which I felt an itch to look back at my prior, seemingly-ages-ago life as a work-from-home pharmacist. Rather, the ability, power, and resources to affect direct, positive, and situation-altering change on people who have not been fortunate enough to learn for themselves is all I look forward to now. With each new day and every fresh perspective granted, nothing but unique, life-changing, legacy-lasting opportunities abound amidst voices expressing otherwise. And this is what drives me daily to further the impact of delivering hope to our communities.