{"id":19527,"date":"2013-02-11T16:27:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T21:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19527"},"modified":"2013-02-11T16:27:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T21:27:54","slug":"new-employees-to-help-neighbors-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19527","title":{"rendered":"New Employees To Help Neighbors, Small Busi- nesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U. S. Congresswoman <strong>Kathy Castor<\/strong> announced the addition of new staff members to work in the areas of Constituent Services, Outreach, Communications and Legislative Services.\u00a0 Six new employees have been added to the Congresswoman\u2019s staff. The new employees are:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Rita Cotter<\/strong> will work in the Tampa Bay area as a constituent services representative to directly assist District 14 residents on matters relating to veterans benefits, immigration and other federal services.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Cotter <\/strong>served two stints as an intern with <strong>Rep. Castor\u2019s<\/strong> office, most recently as a social work intern while completing her degree in the same area from the University of South Florida. She has also worked with several community organizations and was named the <em>2012 Volunteer of the Year<\/em> by the Family Justice Center of Hillsborough County. <strong>Ms. Cotter<\/strong> is a Tampa native and graduated from Chamberlain High School.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms.<\/strong> <strong>Victoria Kirby<\/strong> is the new outreach director and will work directly with local organizations to address community concerns. <strong>Ms. Kirby<\/strong> most recently worked on the National Day of Service for the Presidential Inaugural Committee and as the regional field director for <strong>President Obama\u2019s<\/strong> campaign in Pinellas County.<\/p>\n<p>After graduating from Blake High School, she received her bachelor\u2019s degree in communications and master\u2019s degree in public affairs from Howard University.<\/p>\n<p>With more than 10 years of government communications experience, <strong>Ms. Marcia Mejia<\/strong> has joined <strong>Rep. Castor\u2019s<\/strong> office as press secretary.<\/p>\n<p>She previously worked at Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, Hillsborough County government and Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. <strong>Ms. Mejia <\/strong>graduated from the University of Central Florida with degrees in journalism and political science.<\/p>\n<p>She is also a Tampa native and graduated from Leto High School.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Javier Gamboa<\/strong> and <strong>Kevin Karpay<\/strong> have been hired as legislative assistants in <strong>Rep. Castor\u2019s<\/strong> Washington, D. C., office and will focus on a variety of federal legislative issues, including energy, environment, immigration, budget, housing, transportation and Veteran\u2019s Affairs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gamboa <\/strong>previously worked on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and served as an intern for <strong>Sen. Barbara Boxer<\/strong> (D-Cali). He received his degree in political science from California State University, Fullerton.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Karpay <\/strong>previously served as a junior legislative assistant and staff assistant for <strong>Rep. Castor,<\/strong> and also has campaign experience in Tampa, and Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>He graduated from Tampa Preparatory School and Sewanee The University of the South, with majors in political science and Spanish.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U. S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor announced the addition of new staff members to work in the areas of Constituent Services, Outreach, Communications and Legislative Services.\u00a0 Six new employees have been added to the Congresswoman\u2019s staff. The new employees are: Ms. Rita Cotter will work in the Tampa Bay area as a constituent services representative to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}