"The best part of my career has been work I wasn't paid to do," says Jennifer Benz of her pro bono experience. "I am most proud of work done outside of my 'day job' for nonprofit organizations."

In fact, pro bono work has helped Jennifer uncover new talents and discover new meaning in her work and in her life. Since taking on her first Taproot pro bono project in 2002, Jennifer has transformed from a semi-bored corporate consultant into a successful and energized entrepreneur who is continuously engaged in nonprofit work, both here and abroad. "Pro bono opportunities outside my designated career path helped me construct a road to many more opportunities," she says.

Jennifer's transformation began with a career crisis. It was 2002 and she was working as a communications consultant for a large and highly regarded human resources consulting firm. She had recently moved back into Corporate America after an intensely engaging experience at a visionary dot com. Even though she liked her job and was lucky to have a great manager, she missed the challenge and excitement of her dot com days and longed to recapture that spark.

"I spent months struggling with my career options; including torturous readings of books like What Color is Your Parachute? and wondering if hiding out in grad school was a better idea than sticking it out in Corporate America," Jennifer recalls.

It was in the midst of this career crisis that Jennifer discovered the Taproot Foundation, which was then a brand-new organization with an intriguing but unproven model. Jennifer attended an orientation session and was immediately intrigued.

After connecting with Taproot's founder Aaron Hurst, he suggested the idea of expanding Taproot's mission to include human resources consulting projects for nonprofits. Soon, Jennifer was taking the lead in Taproot's very first human resources consulting project.

Suddenly, work was exciting again, and meaningful. "We put together a team of consultants from our company, as well as clients–even competitors!–to figure out how Taproot could offer strategic HR projects to the nonprofit community," Jennifer says. "I was collaborating with an incredibly talented group, including consultants who had 20 more years of experience than I did, people whom I would have never had that kind of exposure to otherwise."

Jennifer and her team worked to distill the human resources theories and best practices that work for Fortune 500 companies down to simpler strategies that could work for a 20-person-nonprofit. The goal was to create a model that could be expanded and replicated for other organizations in the future.

"I was growing and being challenged in much the same way as when I was working at the fabled dot-com," Jennifer says. "Soon, my 'regular' client opportunities started to grow as well and I was engaged in all of my work–not just the pro bono projects."

After that first pro bono project, Jennifer was hooked. "Pro bono work is now an essential and integrated part of my identity as a professional and an individual," she says.

She started volunteering because she wanted to help others, but soon discovered that pro bono work was a way of helping herself as well. "Pro bono work lets you take charge of your career, exposes you to new people and new situations, improves your problem-solving and analytical skills, and expands your network," she says.

Jennifer also says she learned more about performance measurement through Taproot than she would have in ten years working as a consultant for big clients. "My work with Taproot led to interactions with senior colleagues that I never would have met through my day-to-day work," she says. "I found a mentor in a senior-level leader and gained experience on strategic projects that were well beyond my job description at the time."

Jennifer's Taproot experience prepared her well for the next chapter in her career: starting her own business. Jennifer's human resources communications company, Benz Communications, has been thriving for more than three years.

Her firm regularly provides pro bono consulting services for nonprofit clients including La Cocina, a San Francisco business incubators that helps low-income women launch and grow food businesses and As Green as it Gets, a micro-enterprise and micro-finance organization in Guatemala. "I include my pro bono case studies on my web site and consider them to be just as legitimate experience as paid work," she says.

At the same time, Jennifer remains involved with Taproot and strongly recommends pro bono work to friends and employees. "The professional development opportunities in pro bono are far beyond what's available in the corporate world, but you have to seek them out," she says. "Don't wait for your manager or your department to bring you a great development opportunity–go out and find it yourself."

Written pro bono by Pamela Skillings - a pro bono consultant with Taproot Foundation, career coach, and author of Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams.