19 Ways Volunteering Can Reveal Your Hidden Passions

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder following a period of depression in 2022. Wanting to find support, I discovered the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) City of Angels chapter through a web search. They offer peer support groups for people living with mood disorders, and I felt I would benefit from connecting with others going through similar experiences. I felt at home immediately, and it’s since become a huge part of my life.

I now serve on the Board of Directors of DBSA California and developed a 6-part workshop series called Career Navigation for People with Mood Disorders. I created it to provide resources for people in the community seeking sustainable careers that account for the unique challenges of living with mood disorders—including energy management, schedule flexibility, and the nuance of thriving in work environments outside the typical 9-5. Last year, I earned the DBSA Outstanding Peer Leader Award from the national chapter, and I recently launched my own career coaching and consulting practice. It combines my 7 years of career advising experience, my Ed.D. in Organizational Change and Leadership, and my lived experience with bipolar disorder to guide people and organizations toward work that works for them.

Had someone told me before my diagnosis that it would lead to connecting with a community who truly understands me and has impacted my life on this scale, I would never have believed them. DBSA has genuinely changed my life for the better, and I love being able to contribute to creating a space where people feel heard and seen.

I didn’t find my passion for counselling through traditional volunteering—I found it through showing up at 12-step meetings after rehab in 2012. I’d borrowed massive amounts of money to get sober at the Haynes Clinic, and when I walked into those meetings afterwards, I was just trying to survive. But something shifted when people started asking me to sponsor them or just listen to their stories over coffee.

What blindsided me was how much I loved sitting across from someone who felt completely hopeless and watching them realize they weren’t alone. I’d spent years as an accountant dealing with spreadsheets, thinking that was my path. But in those conversations—usually at dodgy cafes at weird hours because that’s when people in early recovery need support—I felt more alive than I ever had balancing books.

The turning point was realizing I kept naturally doing what professional counsellors do: asking the right questions, holding space without judgment, helping people see patterns they couldn’t see themselves. After about three years sober, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I started getting every qualification I could find while still showing up to support people for free, and that eventually became The Freedom Room.

The volunteer work never stopped though. I still meet people who can’t afford services, and those conversations remind me why I do this. When someone finally admits they need help after years of lying about their drinking—like I did with those wine bottles I claimed “weren’t mine”—being the person who says “I get it, I’ve been there” isn’t volunteering anymore. It’s just who I am now.

I started the “Red, White & Roof” veteran giveback campaign in 2023 thinking it was just good marketing—give a deserving vet a free roof, get some positive press, move on. What I didn’t expect was sitting across from a 68-year-old Marine whose roof had been leaking for three years while he quietly paid for his grandkids’ school supplies instead of calling a roofer.

That nomination form we set up? We got 47 entries the first year. I read every single one myself instead of delegating it, and something clicked when I realized these weren’t marketing leads—they were people who’d served their country and were now literally sleeping with buckets in their bedroom. The winner’s wife cried when we showed up to start work, not because of the free roof, but because someone finally saw them.

Now I chase that feeling. We’ve given away three roofs so far, and I personally visit every finalist’s home during the judging process. Last June I spent four hours on a Saturday crawling through a vet’s attic in 95-degree heat documenting water damage, and I couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks. Turns out I don’t just love roofing—I’m obsessed with using technical expertise to solve real problems for people who got forgotten.

The volunteer work taught me something Harvard never did: you can know every detail about GAF shingle specs and balance sheets, but the real skill is recognizing when someone needs help and having the operational capacity to deliver it at scale. That’s why we built the entire campaign with clear square footage limits and judging criteria—so we could actually follow through instead of making empty promises.

The ministry of teaching a small, haphazard midweek Bible class showed it. The band seldom dressed in a similar fashion week after week. The attendance was between three and ten. Ages spanned decades. It seemed like too much preparation to fill the room it was in, but something shifted as soon as we got into a discussion, rather than lecture. People stayed after class. Inquiries were still ongoing in the corridor. Bible ceased to be abstract and became personal.

The scene that helped explain the passion was when a number of participants were bearing silent burdens. Unemployment, burnout in caring. The class slowed down. The fewer the verses read, the more we conversed. The feeling of trust arose due to the feeling of permanence and leisure that prevailed in the space. The importance of listening was equal to that of teaching.

The voluntary experience demonstrated that it does not need a stage and a scale to make a difference. It involves being there and waiting. The zeal came in the form of attending every week ready to meet the people who attended. The experience changed priorities. Being a shepherd by teaching was more satisfying than being a leader. It verified that significant development frequently occurs in the backroom, which is influenced by routine and not focus.

The volunteer experience that revealed a passion I didn’t know I had? Mentorship—but not in the “polished LinkedIn connection” kind of way. I started helping out in an online tech forum years ago, where most of the questions were scrappy, very beginner-level stuff. Think: “Why won’t my code run?” or “Can someone explain this in plain English?”

At first, I thought I was just doing a good deed—passing on knowledge, being helpful. But over time, I noticed something strange. The more I explained things to others, the more clearly I understood the big picture. Helping someone debug a problem wasn’t just about the answer. It was like holding up a mirror to my own thought process. I had to clarify the why, not just the how. And suddenly, I was learning twice as fast.

That’s when it hit me: mentorship wasn’t just me giving back—it was me getting better. It rewired how I communicated, how I led teams, how I thought about design and systems thinking. I went from viewing mentorship as charity to seeing it as compound interest.

Now, at Listening.com, we build mentorship into the company DNA—across onboarding, team structure, even product design. Because if you treat mentorship as something you give after you’re successful, you’re missing the point. It’s actually how you become successful in the first place.

I never expected community health fairs to show me my real calling. Back when I first started attending these events in the Colleyville area, I thought I’d just hand out brochures and answer basic questions—but what happened was people started pulling me aside to share deeply personal struggles they’d never told their doctors about.

One conversation stuck with me: a guy in his 50s broke down explaining how his marriage was falling apart because of erectile dysfunction he was too embarrassed to address. After we talked through his options and he eventually came in for treatment, he sent me a message months later saying we “saved his relationship.” That’s when it clicked—I wasn’t just running a medical business, I was giving people their lives back.

What I found through those volunteer interactions was that I’m obsessed with breaking the shame around sexual health. People would literally whisper their questions at these events, looking over their shoulders like they were doing something wrong. Now our whole approach at Sexual Wellness Centers is built around creating that judgment-free space I saw people desperately needed but couldn’t find anywhere else.

The volunteer work taught me that the medical treatments are only half the equation—the other half is making people feel safe enough to actually walk through the door. That insight shaped everything from how we train our staff to how we design our intake process.

Before I was at Gotham, I volunteered with a nonprofit helping them rewrite their donor communications. I went into it thinking I was basically just offering some writing help—like, they needed better emails and updates, I could write reasonably well, seemed like a straightforward way to be useful.

What I actually discovered through doing that work was that I really loved the people-understanding part of it. Like, figuring out why specific donors cared about this organization, what motivated them, how to tell stories about the work in ways that would actually connect with them emotionally. The writing part was almost secondary. The real work was listening carefully, translating between different perspectives, and building trust through that understanding.

Because it was volunteer work and there was zero pressure or performance anxiety attached to it, I just had this space to pay attention to what parts of the work I was actually energized by. And that’s where I realized—I don’t just like writing as a skill. What I actually like is using communication to create real understanding between people.

That realization has directly shaped how I approach marketing now. It’s not about producing the most content or having the cleverest campaigns. It’s about understanding what matters to people and communicating in ways that help the right people figure out if we’re a good fit for each other.

Years ago, I signed up to build houses for families in need. I expected to hammer nails or paint walls. Instead, the site foreman threw me into the crawlspace to help install ductwork. It was hot, dusty, and cramped. Most people on the crew hated that job.

But I loved it. I watched how a few metal tubes and a fan turned a stagnant, stifling box into a comfortable home. It wasn’t just about temperature. It was about safety and breathability. That weekend sparked an obsession with airflow and ventilation that I didn’t know I had.

Now, as the Vice President of Industrial at Knape Associates, I deal with massive industrial fans and pollution control every day. People often think ventilation is boring infrastructure. I see it as the lungs of a building. That dusty crawlspace taught me that invisible systems often matter the most. You don’t notice good air, but you definitely suffer without it. That single volunteer shift shaped my entire career path in this industry.

I offered to help a local nonprofit upgrade their website because they were stuck on an old platform that no one knew how to utilize. I was going to move the content and move on, but the director kept questioning why some sites got more traffic than others. I started showing her Google Analytics and explaining how users behave in general. She loved it and started asking questions. Because she was curious, I looked at statistics that I usually didn’t pay attention to.

I realized that I liked teaching individuals how to read their own analytics. I never thought of myself as a teacher; I only thought of myself as someone who did the work. It was more satisfying to explain bounce rate or traffic patterns than to run advertising. I now hold workshops for small business owners once a month. That endeavor taught me that giving people authority makes me happier than being the expert they rely on.