Being an intern in a business incubator is a completely different experience to me, when your customers are startups in many stages. 1871 is the flag ship project of The Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (CEC), a non-profit organization that supports entrepreneurs on their path to building high-growth, sustainable businesses that serve as platforms for economic development and civic leadership. Their purpose is to create the experiences and space that founders need while they build extraordinary businesses. There are almost 50 employees at 1871, with a dozen of interns at multiple departments. They are all managed by Betsy Ziegler, who is the first woman CEO of Chicago tech incubator.

As a Research and Analytics Intern, my tasks are currently focusing on measuring conversions of user activities on 1871 website. Since COVID-19, the rate of user engagement has decreased. Therefore, tracking how users interact with the website, what sources lead them to the website, the number of new/ returning users are significantly important. The softwares that I use are Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google sheets. In addition, other platforms such as Hubspot, PeopleVine, Slack and Google Meet are utilized to increase the effectiveness of work and communication.

Although this is a virtual internship, I still enjoy my experience at 1871 because of the support and interaction in the Marketing team as well as among employees at the company. My manager, Jenna, who is the Director of Marketing is flexible and supportive. I have a 30 minute meeting with her and another 30 minute meeting with all Marketing members every day. Once every two weeks, all interns at 1871 have a virtual lunch meeting or happy hours. We share our experiences and get to know others’ tasks and departments. What I like the most from working here is there are tremendous events and workshops hosted by 1871 that I can attend for free. Many of them are about Marketing, Branding and Data Analytics; which are the topics I’m passionate about.

This photo was from a Virtual Intern Team Lunch.

Overall, being a marketing intern at a business incubator is a new challenging but rewarding experience. I have become more confident and prepared for the journey ahead.

As a Marketing Intern at Lynn Hazan & Associates, I have completed a variety of duties. Due to LH&A being a small firm, less than ten people, it is critical interns have proficient knowledge of computer programs and learn new skills quickly because no one intern specializes in a specific area. While interns may be more advanced in certain areas compared to others, all interns will complete priority assignments.

            In the morning, the team has a phone call or Skype meeting to discuss what’s new and what needs to completed. Once the morning brief concludes, and information is shared, interns are assigned tasks by the President of the firm. Intern tasks are dependent on where the firm is in the recruitment process for a position. For example, when the firm obtains a new job to recruit for, all interns search for places to promote the opening and reach potential candidates. Upon this task’s completion, which could take days, interns will then search for potential candidates to fill the position. Teamwork is a critical component of our success, which is why we must be expert communicators. Constant communication ensures there is no overlap in the work we complete. When a potential candidate gets discovered, we reach out with a letter of inquiry, so we must verify with one another the status of the potential candidate. We do not want to message the same person more than once since it could result in rejection due to spam. Once the potential candidate is interviewed and accepts an offer, which could take weeks, the LH&A website is updated to reflect the fill.

            While the overview above is broad, there are much smaller intricacies that interns must perform to be successful. For example, coming into this internship, I was unfamiliar with web design and content creation. However, job promotions and advertisements taught me how to expand my skills. Visuals are significant to the success of a job promotion. It is what catches the eye of a job seeker. Due to the threat of copyright laws and lawsuits, I could not simply take an image from Google; instead, I had to find a free visual or create my own. Mind you some interns were undoubtedly more experienced than me in this aspect of marketing, but at LH&A, it is a core value that we all learn. Therefore, even though I lacked the content creation experience, I was assigned this duty until I became adept.

            Learning new hard skills has been fulfilling, but learning new soft skills, like how to be a strong leader, has been more rewarding. Since I was the first intern to join LH&A this summer, I have slightly more knowledge of the firm and industry compared to the other interns. Because of this, when our President’s time is limited and more assistance is needed, interns contact me to ask questions and walk them through their tasks. Before they officially joined the team, I had already completed the assignments they were doing for the first time. So, I was able to assist them adequately. This experience has taught me how to be patient, available, and confidant.

            Overall, this experience has been a learning one. With no previous marketing experience, I have not been able to utilize the marketing skills I learned at DePaul in the professional working world until I took this internship opportunity. My writing and communication skills have improved, along with my critical thinking skills, content creation skills, leadership skills, and market research skills.

Katherine Way starts their day like many other offices around the country, at 9am. I arrived at a small office in a business park in Jacksonville Florida. We are a small company with only 5 or 6 people on the average day, so we still come into the office when we can during this time. I start by walking through the office to the warehouse where my desk is set up and check my email. My title is just Intern so I help with anything and everything they need and most days I help with shipping by printing invoices, collecting and packaging clothing for shipment, and updating inventory. After that I go and check our social media, which include Instagram and Facebook, and also create posts for both for our special promotions. Also we like to keep up by posting daily content about the company and our beach boutique. Right now we are getting ready to launch new fall colors and styles for our clothes so we need to have photoshoot days, I help out with organizing and pulling clothing and also making sure the clothes are clean and steamed. The upkeep of the clothes is very important for the presentation which affects our campaigns and content creation.

I feel I have learned a lot so far this summer, I now understand the logistics behind shipping and how it affects the customer experience. Also the creative side and how we come up with new ideas to grab people attention and present our clothing in a different way. Also how to then track the customer interaction with our email campaigns and social media posts, then using this information to better advertise and sell our product. There are many different platforms that we track the customer experience along with keeping our information organized in the same place. I have learned a lot about Shopify, which we use to run the website, also Klaviyo to create and track emails we send out. I am excited for the rest of my summer with this company and being included in sales meetings and more projects.

The office celebrating my 21st birthday with prosecco and cupcakes during one of our photo shoots.

Setting up web and social shot, also helping out by wearing the clothes and posing for shot on the web

“Wow!” is all I can say as my 2020 Summer Internship with PepsiCo is coming to an end. Given the current circumstances with COVID-19, this year was the first year in which PepsiCo shifted their internship program to be entirely online. Regardless of this fact, they knocked it out of the park and ensured each intern had a fun and engaging learning experience during the program.

While there were over 950 interns this year, with roughly 2/3 being in sales and supply chain, I was one of only 3 interns whose function/title was “Category Management and Insights Intern”. PepsiCo is a massive company with over 260,000 employees and dozens of different brands, 20 of them generating at least 1 billion dollars in revenue annually. Out of these many brands, I was assigned to the Quaker branch who is headquartered at the “Plaza” in Chicago. Given all of this, prior to the internship I was worried it would be difficult to network and learn more about the company and its culture while working remotely. Not only was I wrong, but I was able to meet a ton of amazing people and learn about nearly every brand that PepsiCo has! I learned that PepsiCo has an immersive culture that allows people to feel comfortable and voice their opinions. The many employee resource groups they offer interns to attend internal and external company events (in this case zoom events) where there were different games, discussions, and breakouts for the interns and employees to enjoy and learn from.

As for the day to day, the recruiters were not kidding when they said, “no two days are the same”. The program was broken down into 3 main parts: Functional work, Cross-functional work, and PEP-U Degreed Learning. The Functional work was where the highest priority was placed, this was where I would support the Quaker business by analyzing data and creating Sell-in stories to help drive revenue and grow shelving space. I was assisted by mentors and my direct manager in learning on how to pull and analyze data, as well as key insights for making an impactful story for the customer. Everybody was incredibly helpful, and questions were encouraged. My recommendations were given to real customers and I was able to make a real impact for the company. The Cross-functional work was entirely new for the internship program and was added this year. I was placed on a team with 5 other interns from different functions and assigned to a project to work on which allowed me to work with brands such as Mountain Dew and Doritos. Finally, Pep-U Degreed learning was an online source for taking courses and learning more about PepsiCo and how to “crush expectations”. There were many useful insights and courses that allowed us interns to choose skills to improve on and grow overall.

Ultimately, I highly recommend interning with PepsiCo! I have learned so much and have met so many incredible people even though it was virtual. The learning opportunities provided by PepsiCo are endless and there are surefire connections that will last a lifetime. Thank you, PepsiCo!