Daniel L. Brindisi '89 and Cynthia Brindisi P'19 Internship Fellowship

This summer I had the opportunity to travel to Bangkok, Thailand, and do an incredible internship through the Freeman Foundation. I worked at a company called Kingdom of Service Design as a marketing intern, while I was there I specifically worked for their crypto gaming client, Nakomoto Games to improve their social media presence. This included things like posting consistently on platforms like TikTok and Twitter but also doing a lot of market research. I would collaborate with other interns to compare their competitors' marketing strategies with our clients.

This summer the SLU fellowship scholarship gave me the opportunity to work in Senator Patrick O'Connor's office. This incredible experience gave me the opportunity allowed me to create legislation for my home district while getting a chance to work at the Massachusetts Statehouse. Through the internship, I improved my problem-solving skills, as Greg my chief of staff would give me a legislative or constituent issue that I would have to address using my own methods.

During my internship with the New Hampshire Public Defender I worked closely with other investigators, attorneys and their clients. I interviewed witnesses and alleged victims, wrote reports, took photographs, delivered subpoenas to witnesses, and gathered records and documentation essential to the defense. Additionally, I visited incarcerated clients to conduct interviews, obtain signatures for the release of information, and just to check in about their cases.

I observed the daily tasks of a licensed physical therapist a few times a week for around a month at Ortho Neuro in Pickerington, OH. I was able to meet people of all kinds, learn more about the anatomy of the human body, and figure out whether this profession is one I am truly interested in. I helped with laundry, cleaning tables, fetching rehab equipment, and correcting patients' form when doing their rehab exercises.

 This summer, I worked at the KhyberPakhtun Khwa Bar Council as a Research Intern under the supervision of Advocate Mr. Muhammad Sarir. I assisted Mr. Sarir and other legal practitioners with research, maintaining correspondence and some clerical work. My main focus was on human rights and freedom of speech laws in Pakistan during this internship on which I conducted extensive research with other prominent human rights lawyers in the Bar. The internship served as an important network opportunity as I got to meet with human rights lawyers across the province and learn from their experience.

My research focused on the reification and maintenance of the concept of race in the United States, through the application of Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony. This research also attempted to demonstrate how cultural hegemony constructed an agreement among all classes and social groups through coercion and cooperation to ensure repression. Furthermore, my analysis was supplemented by phenomenological accounts of those who have experienced racial inequality in the United States, to explain the impact of race not only as a concept, but as a constructed reality.

During the summer of 2022, I worked as a Public Relations Intern at AGEXPORT in their Alliances for Cooperation Department. AGEXPORT is an association that brings together exporters to increase interdependence and provide a medium for healthy and efficient cooperation. As an intern, I specialize my work on profile research for future alliances and partner policy recommendations. I work around the policy topics of economic sustainability, women in the labor market focusing on Latin America, and sustainable agriculture for Guatemalan crops.

For my experience, I chose to intern at a Cannabis brand centered around women empowerment. As an aspiring writer and journalist it was important for me to find a company where I felt I could relate to their mission. SMK BRK is a company that curates blog posts, playlists, and lets people share their own personal experience with the plant. The company prides itself on education and outreach. 

For this internship I had a couple of goals that I wanted to achieve including: 

This summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern for the Integrated Center for Child Development. While working with the center, I was able to gain insight into the diagnosis and evaluation of young children for developmental disorders. In particular, with support from an advisor, a postdoc intern, and my fellow intern, we evaluated and scored a new questionnaire to become a diagnostic tool for autism spectrum disorder for children under the age of four.

As the digital communications intern with the Weave News Communications team, I worked alongside an incredible team to achieve the organization's summer goals. Within the communications team, we were able to gage what promotes audiences' interactions with Weave social media content and developed ways to enhance that engagement. As for me, I created a new social media series that will be published biweekly beginning of this year.

My work in RTS during the summer of 2022 is constructed by two parts. One part is daily pricing items. Every morning when I opened my inbox, I would see a list of items that were waiting for me to be priced. Another part is the projects my managers gave me. Some were simple, but some were designed to challenge me and sharpen my professional skill. Below is listed my major achievement during summer 2022:

Throughout the course of my summer internship, I worked on a number of projects for the Birds of Vermont Museum. The projects include taking inventory of the insect collection as well as uploading the species onto iNaturalist, a website that shares observations of species with naturalists across the globe! Another project I worked on was creating plant markers for the pollinator gardens. I did this by spending time in the gardens identifying as many species as I could.