Politics/Community Involvement

When I opened by office, I said, “Okay, I want to find my niche in real estate, how can I combine my passions.” My passion is real estate, my passion is charity. So, I said, “Alright, lets combine the two.” So, basically our mission here is giving back one sale at a time. So, Kindness Coalition was formed when Castinetti Real Estate was formed. After every sale all of my agents donate to a local charity under our client’s name. So that is one way we give back. And then we have a huge network of Kindness Coalition – you can add us on Facebook and check them out – but we do signature events throughout the year for the homeless, for DCF [Department of Children and Families], for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. So, we have signature events, and we do a summer event. We are always trying to do our part and do what we can in the community.

With the current ownership group when they bought the team in 2015, I think the team was exclusively white men on the staff across the board.  It has been what six or seven years since then? I think it has changed drastically. I actually think it’s changed a lot since we made the move to Worcester. We just have had better success finding a broader array of candidates. We have a lot of women, we have over time—and we are finally getting more racial diversity as well—diversity in other areas. It has been a priority. Brooke Cooper who your classmates talked to, is now the Senior Vice President and we now have two female VPs which is great. Since I came to the club, I was the only female VP until Brooke was made one. And I think it’s been good. You know there's always growing experiences and we have been trained well. I wanted to bring more women into the front office, it's a nice and fun environment with that. Not everyone is the same. Everyone has different backgrounds,everyone has different thoughts about baseball, how we should interact with the community and that makes it more interesting.

So now I'm the Senior Vice President and Assistant General Manager for the Worcester Red Sox and there's a lot that goes into it.  People ask what day to day is like, and I always say every day is different. I directly oversee productions and ballpark entertainment and that includes what you see on the video board, as well as social media and the television broadcast. I oversee merchandise, so the team store and all of our branding, community relations.  And then marketing has really been kind of my specialty and that includes advertising, but also outreach and the different promotions that we do. I have a hand in some of our HR [human resources] efforts, including recruiting and hiring and training. So pretty broad, but I think that's one of the really beautiful things about minor league baseball is that you're not put into a box and you get to explore a lot of different areas. We all wear many different hats, and it's been a really great opportunity to grow professionally.

Be yourself. Be strong. [laughs] Be ready and don’t be too hard on yourself. I think that women are coming to a point where they can feel stronger and express that. I would say also have a sense of humor; don’t expect to be perfect. Realize that most of the time life is good and do your best.

Well, I didn’t really choose, [laughs] I was forced to choose. If I had stayed on my original path, then I would be professor of law by now, teaching. But you learn to adjust, I guess. That’s a plus. You learn how to adjust to different circumstances.  Suddenly you are dropped in the middle of something—somewhere you’ve never been. And I think you just learn to adjust. And I think compromise, adjustment—that’s what it taught me.  Cons, of course, I wish [laughs] I could have stayed in Poland. But there was huge political unrest in Poland.  That was one of major reasons why I left.  I didn’t want my children to go through this. So, I don’t know how it would have been in 1980. That was solidarity movement in Poland and the whole of Europe was a lot of different movements—political movements. So, that was reason why I left and who knows what I’d be doing there if I stayed. But here, definitely that was challenge. But I think it made me stronger. I couldn’t rely on my mom anymore, which I did a lot, and my grandmother. So, now I was on my own. I had to survive and I had two small children. You learn quickly what to do, that you can survive new circumstances you don’t know much about.