Shpend Behrami

“On Point for College was always there for me.”

In 1999, Shpend spent two months living in a refugee camp in Macedonia with his parents and sister before leaving the country and resettling in Syracuse. With support from On Point for College, Shpend graduated from SUNY Morrisville with a bachelor’s degree in information technology.

In 2011, Shpend met John Watt, former Board President of On Point for College and a former Executive Vice President at Alliance Bank (now NBT Bank). After a brief conversation and interview, Watt offered him an internship with the bank’s IT department, and he’s been employed there ever since. “On Point is the reason I have my current job,” he said. “Besides helping me get the internship, they helped tremendously while I was in college.”

Shpend views the war in his homeland of Kosovo as the greatest obstacle he has ever faced, and credits his parents for guiding him through that experience. “During the war they were able to keep us out of harm’s way,” he said. “In the refugee camp, they made it feel like life was still normal. And they were able to move us to the United States so we would have the best chance to make something of ourselves.”