‘As Healing For Me As It Is For My Patients’: New Mom Leaves Career in Finance To Launch Acupuncture Practice on Forest Street

Maria Zervas Batista first came to acupuncture as a patient, in 2002. Fresh out of the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in hand, she’d been living for one year in New York City and working in finance. “It was so overwhelming and there was a lot of stress, and one of my friends suggested that I try acupuncture,” the Boca Raton, Fla. native and Wilton mother of three kids under three years old recalled on a recent afternoon. “It was so amazing.

PHOTOS: NCHS Senior Internship Program, through the Lens of Kayleigh Pace

The Senior Internship Program (SIP) is opportunity for NCHS seniors to take what knowledge they’ve gained in four years outside of the classroom and into the real world for the last month of the school year. From May 18 to June 17, 80 seniors are dispersed throughout New Canaan and Fairfield County working in a variety of different fields such as medicine, retail, business, teaching and many others. The four-week program runs throughout the hours of the typical school day in which seniors work between 20 and 25 hours a week. Organized by NCHS College and Career Center Coordinator Susan Carroll, each of the students participating in the unpaid internship program are working at pre-approved worksites in fields that they are interested in partaking in the future. Kayleigh Pace, a senior intern for Jane Beiles Photography, took the pictures above (and Jane took a couple, too) to give a glimpse of what many interns are taking part in at their work sites.