Community service isn’t always glamorous. In fact, many times it requires sacrifice and sweat equity. Sometimes it looks like cardboard dust, ink-smudged thumbs and a row of bankers’ boxes filling up as a team sorts books by age level and theme. That was the scene in our company’s Nashville office when Business Consultant Mohera Narimetla rallied colleagues to support Book’em, a local nonprofit dedicated to distributing free books to children from low-income households.

Mohera’s volunteer experience with Book’em was in support of our annual Community Giving Initiative, a program through which participating Urban Scientists nominate a nonprofit they’re passionate about supporting and complete a four-hour (minimum) paid volunteerism requirement. Once they volunteer with the organization and create a recap about their experience, our company awards a $500 corporate donation to the nominated nonprofit.

When the Community Giving program nomination period opened, Mohera didn’t hesitate to get involved. Her decision to support Book’em was personal.

“I became a voracious reader as an adult during the pandemic,” she says. “It was a really isolating time, and reading became a powerful form of escapism for me. I wanted to help kids experience the same comfort and enjoyment I’ve found in reading.”

Her renewed love of reading in effect, Mohera researched local nonprofits that supported literacy for children, and in 2023, she came across Book’em. That year, she organized a holiday book drive that collected hundreds of books and rallied her coworkers to process them at the nonprofit’s headquarters.

Book’em’s mission goes beyond simply giving children books. The organization focuses on representation, ensuring the stories they share reflect the diversity of the children who receive them.

“Walking through Book’em’s headquarters, you see books that feature every kind of family, every kind of child,” Mohera said. “Stories about Black girls becoming engineers, bilingual books, books about kids with two moms or two dads. It’s a celebration of identity and inclusion.”

That detail is more than a gesture. Research on literacy consistently shows representation increases engagement. When a child recognizes their own name, neighborhood or family structure in print, they read longer, retain more and see reading as something meant for them.

Our company’s Community Giving Initiative donated $11,500 to employee-nominated nonprofits in 2025. And through this important program, we also offer paid volunteer time off, encouraging teams to step out of their daily responsibilities and into their communities to lend a hand to our neighbors who need us most.

For Narimetla, her hope is programs like this keep expanding, turning single events—like the 2023 book drive that first introduced her to Book’em—into ongoing partnerships that build community muscle over time.

“Mohera diligently volunteered her time to process book donations for our Books for Nashville’s Kids (BFNK) program,” said Celina Cunningham, book programs coordinator for Book’em. “Volunteers like her are essential to helping us more efficiently get high-quality books into kids’ hands, and we greatly appreciate her contribution to Book’em’s mission to ignite a love of reading in all of Nashville’s children.”

The Nashville team’s book drive may have wrapped up, but Mohera hopes its spirit of service inspires more Urban Scientists to find ways to support causes close to home. For her, the impact of the Community Giving Initiative isn’t just the donation itself—it’s the permission to pause.

“We spend so much time in the data,” she said. “It’s good to pause and remember there are people behind the numbers.”

What stays with her isn’t the count of books or hours logged, it’s knowing that, somewhere, a child will see themselves in a story for the first time.