Stewart’s Shops and Dake Family Internship Fellowship Fund

I spent this summer interning at a professional servicing firm, Mahanakorn Partners Group, in Bangkok, Thailand this summer. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Stewart's Shop and Dake Family Internship Fund for this tremendous opportunity. I would also like to thank the Center for Career Excellence here at St. Lawrence for guiding me through this opportunity. There were a few specific skills from my internship that I am glad to have heading into my senior year of university. First, I felt that I significantly improved my communication skills.

I spent my summer as an Intern at Rolling Grocer 19, one of the first non-profit grocery stores of its kind. Tucked away from the bustling Warren St. in Hudson N.Y, I was able to contribute to the cause of providing food at a reasonable price in a food insecure area thanks to the generous unpaid internship fellowship that St. Lawrence offers. This internship opened my eyes to the incredible and selfless work that goes behind helping a community, as well as feeling far more connected with my locality, in terms of food and the people.

This summer I did an internship with Dr. Lisa Francey Towle '92. The reason I decided to do this internship was to be able to explore my interest in health and wellness as well as be able to expand my knowledge on web programming. 

littleGrasse Foodworks farm is a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm located in Canton, NY. It serves approximately 50 families in the North Country with fresh, organic vegetables through a free-choice share system.

I dedicated two full academic years to working with littleGrasse, volunteering at the farm once a week for two hours in the evening after classes. This opportunity granted me valuable lessons to participate in farming operations throughout the entire growing season. 

I worked an internship for Galaxy Kids in Bangkok, Thailand. I and three other interns worked as a marketing team for the newly released AI-powered language-speaking app for kids. I had three major goals during my experience. One goal I had while interning in Thailand was to immerse myself in a different market. During the internship, our boss relied on our opinion heavily because we were the youngest employees in the office. Appealing to the Thai market and people was hard for me because my ideas of what would work best coming from America would not work in Thailand.

During my time with Recycle Track Team as a legal intern, I was able to work on the following:

Having found the right major at St. Lawrence, it was time to gain professional experience from which I  can define my career path. My wonderful advisor connected me with an alumna heading local Clinical Research and five months later I began my internship working on a unique case for the summer.

As an intern in the finance department, I assisted on and completed a wide range of projects. These included calculating COGS and margins on national clients, updating KPI files with consolidated customer site retention information, assisted in the cleanup of corporate card transactions YTD, mapped which current NYC customers fell into 20 regions of the city, tracked which months past invoices were from to help clean up accrual records, and spread financials from the 10-K and 10-Q reports of key public competitors.

This summer I had the opportunity to work in a biochemistry lab at Montana State University. Currently, there is an emerging field of ‘omics’, and laboratory techniques such as mass spectrometry, limited proteolysis, and differential scanning fluoroscopy give us insights into the chemical composition, structure, and conformation of biomolecules. I used these techniques to work on two unique projects that use similar biochemical principles to address arsenic toxicity and CO2 fixation. 

Haylei spent her summer living near Copenhagen, Denmark, where she interned with Jesper L. Services in the development of a bike café with the partnership of a local sustainable farm. The farm lies along a popular bike route from Berlin, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark, in an area where there are few places to stop and rest. Haylei learned about what it takes to create and market not just a business, but a business built on sustainability and ethical practices. In addition, she gained experience in customer relations and research.

During my summer in DC, I was working for the Energy and Commerce Committee-Subcommittee Consumer Protection and Commerce. My time was informative, as I learned many things involving policy. Such as legislative research, stakeholder meetings, committee research, and much more. The process allowed me to see the inner workings of the most powerful and productive committee on the Hill, providing me with vast knowledge.  

As an intern at Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental, I worked alongside a phenomenal and inspiring team of Environmental activists. During the internship, I had the privilege to witness and assist on weekly ocean water sampling to check in the laboratory the presence and concentration of enterococci. I also had the chance to attend governmental meetings with the objective of creating projects for the protection of the National and transnational ecosystems as well as the health of the local population.

While working at the Human Rights Foundation for the Legal & Policy teams, I had the opportunity to rethink authoritarian regimes and closed societies through the lens of human rights violations, inefficient electoral systems, inexistent freedom of dissent and decayed journalistic freedom.

While at ZEP-RE I served as their Summer Finance Intern. This role was so amazing and I learned a lot in it. I learned simple things like professionalism and mannerisms that are actually different in this international setting. The tea/ coffee room is very active! I also learned accounting softwares to be able to gather the data I was given and efficiently analyze it. The daily assignments ranged from writing summaries and reading reports while my internship long projects included being responsible for 6 portfolios and effectively giving feedback and reporting on them.

I worked with a NGO called KUPU in the Big Island of Hawaii during the summer of 2022. "Kupu" loosely translating to growth or persistence, was the theme of the entire summer. Not only was I able to apply and interview for the job 10,000 miles away, but I was trusted to come into a home that was not my own and given an opportunity to learn and grow along side my colleagues and friends. The HYCC Program I was a Team Member for was in partnership with the Americore, so I facilitated a group of three members through eight different locations of conservation on the Island.

The Pine Street African Burial ground in Kingston, NY was a burial ground used by African Americans up until around 1870, at which point it was bought and used as a lumber yard. Many of the individuals buried on the grounds were likely once enslaved. The burial ground was nothing more than a backyard until around 1990, when Dr. Joseph Diamond, using historical maps, located the cemetery. The property was later – and through much trial and tribulation – purchased by the Harambee organization to be converted into a true and respected cemetery.

This summer I worked for Main Street Alliance of Vermont, an advocacy nonprofit organization with a mission of elevating the voices of small business owners on important public policy issues in Vermont. MSA-VT is committed to bringing historically oppressed business owners to the table to engage in and develop policies that reflect the communities they serve. My job was to be the MSA-VT Field Organizer. I conducted outreach to small business owners to hear their thoughts and perspectives on the policies we are pushing, and bring them into the advocacy work.

This summer, I had the great honor of interning with Justice Eddie McShan. This was a phenomenal experience that allowed me to grasp what the day-to-day is life working in chambers. I interacted with several Judges, court attorneys, and clerks, who were very generous in making time to talk with me.