Author Archives: Christian Zavisca

Grace Cain ’20: Judge Baker Children’s Center, Camp Baker

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Name: Grace Cain
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Chicago

Internship Organization: Judge Baker Children’s Center, Camp Baker
Job Title: Undergraduate Counselor
Location: Boston/Westwood, Mass.

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What’s happening at your internship?

This summer I am working as a camp counselor at Camp Baker, a treatment camp based out of Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. Camp Baker is an STP (Summer Treatment Program) for children with ADHD and other behavioral difficulties. The program uses individualized rewards and consistent discipline in the form of a point system as well as a timeout protocol to help children regulate their emotions and behavior. As a camp counselor, I spend five days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. with 13 6 and 7-year-old children. Camp Baker works to emulates a general camp environment, while also implementing therapeutic techniques to improve the emotional regulation of campers. The two cornerstones of the program are delivering discipline in a neutral and consistent manner when campers are dysregulated (unable to control their behavior), and providing specific and constant praise when campers are behaving appropriately.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I wanted to gain more experience in a clinical setting with children to further determine if clinical work is what I would like to do in the future. During my job search, I found a lot of positive testimonies from parents about Camp Baker that made the program seem like a great place to work.

camp

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

I have been trained in de-escalation and crisis intervention techniques that are vital in keeping campers from hurting themselves and others. When children are dysregulated and take their anger out on counselors verbally and physically, we keep the children safe and maintain the demand we initially placed on the child. At first I was concerned that children would harbor the negative feelings they expressed for me during these moment of dysregulation. On the contrary, because we maintain demands and then immediately lay on praise at the first sight of positive or neutral behavior, children actually often seem more motivated to improve their behavior after moments of dysregulation and to prove to me that they can do better. This has taught me that being stern is positive for this patient population and that it is a disservice to them and their futures to be too lenient, especially in a misguided effort to feel less negativity in the moment.

What is most rewarding about your internship?

The most rewarding part of my internship is watching campers learn to regulate their emotions, decrease the number of timeouts they receive and earn rewards for good behavior. I have been especially surprised and humbled at the campers’ attempts to prove they can do better.

Liz Kunkel ’21: Constituent Services Intern for State Rep. Wendy Ullman

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Name: Liz Kunkel
Class Year: 2021
Major: Political Science
Hometown: Upper Black Eddy. Pa.

Internship Organization: State Rep. Wendy Ullman
Job Title: Constituent Services Intern
Location: Doylestown, Pa.

Meeting with a constituent at Community Day

As a constituent services intern in state Rep. Wendy Ullman’s district office, much of my day-to-day responsibilities include handling constituent casework. Because of the broad range of needs and concerns of our community, these responsibilities can include conducting legislative research, connecting with local nonprofits, and acting as a liaison between the constituent and state agencies. One of the challenges of this position is that each case is unique, meaning that each new constituent contact requires a certain level of problem solving and creativity.

In addition, I have done a lot of community outreach, trying to inform constituents about state services, along with the help we can offer. This includes writing letters, drafting articles, and helping to plan events. One of my biggest projects has been coordinating vendors for a community day the representative hosted this August. This project helped me to gain a lot of organizing and communication skills. I really enjoyed having a large project in which I could see all of my work come to fruition.

Me and State Rep. Wendy Ullman at the Community Day.

I decided to apply for this internship for two reasons: my interest in politics and the proximity to my community. I have always believed that legislation is one of the most effective ways to bring change, so I was excited to receive the opportunity to facilitate community participation in that process. The benefit of working at this level of government is that I experience a lot of direct contact with the community.

As part of my internship, I get to attend events held by nonprofits and talk to the people there about what their needs and concerns are. I attended and participated in Bucks Knocks Out Hunger, a large fundraiser to fight food insecurity, and packed food that would later be distributed to those in need. I also had the privilege to attend a naturalization ceremony at Penn Manor and meet with the League of Women Voters, which was registering the newly naturalized citizens to vote.

One of the most rewarding parts of my internship is getting to handle my own casework. One of the most challenging things is telling a constituent that we do not have an answer or cannot help them the way they need us to. I learn a lot through trying to help other people, and it is fulfilling when you find them an answer or solution. Because of the breadth of assistance we provide, I am constantly learning new things as I handle constituent concerns. Tackling these cases has helped me develop the problem solving and executive skills necessary to thrive in the workplace and at Bryn Mawr.

Emily Augenbraun ’20: Puentes de Salud

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Name: Emily Augenbraun
Class Year: 2020
Major: Spanish
Hometown: Philadelphia

Internship Organization: Puentes de Salud
Job Title: “Puentes Hacia el Futuro” Summer Camp Volunteer Intern
Location: Andrew Jackson School, Philadelphia

What’s happening at your internship?

For my internship this summer, I am one of the 15 volunteer interns for the “Puentes Hacia el Futuro” summer camp program. Puentes de Salud is a nonprofit organization that works with the growing Latinx community in South Philadelphia. Their summer camp program, “Puentes Hacia el Futuro,” is a four-week summer literacy program that specifically focuses on preventing the “summer slide” or summer reading setback. The students that are participating in this program are bilingual and mostly speak Spanish in their homes; however, the summer camp program encourages the use of both English and Spanish. Each week there is a designated theme; for example, week one was art and culture. The group of students that I am working with are a mixture of both rising fifth and sixth graders; however, there are also younger students participating in this program. Throughout the day, I am working in a team with three other volunteer interns in a classroom with nine students total. The day is split up into two parts, with the morning being mainly focused on reading and writing with the group of students, while in the afternoon there are other enrichment activities such as art, healthy living, and coding. The students also have weekly library trips and field trips every week on Thursdays that connect to the theme of the week. I have enjoyed learning about each individual student in this program while also getting to know my fellow interns!

Why did you apply for this internship?

Although I am from Philadelphia, when I initially found out about this internship I did not know much about the organization. Of course this led me to do some further research online, and I soon realized that Puentes de Salud was a quick bus ride away from where I live. Additionally, in researching the organization online, this internship sounded like the perfect fit for me as a current Spanish major. I’ve always been passionate about being able to foster a bilingual learning environment for children who speak both English and Spanish. I want children who are bilingual to realize that they have an incredible gift that they should take advantage of on a daily basis and this internship has allowed me to encourage this ,which has been extremely rewarding.

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

Because this is a teaching-based internship, I am learning many important skills about how to be flexible and adapt to different students’ needs and learning styles in the classroom. Additionally, I am learning to be patient with students who learn at a different pace than others. As a person who is interested in exploring a potential career path in the education field, this firsthand experience of working with students who have diverse backgrounds has given me the opportunity to expand my perspective on teaching. As an educator and role model to these students, I must recognize that each person is a unique learner and continue to encourage them no matter how difficult a task may seem.

What is most rewarding about your internship?

It has been truly amazing to watch all of these young students engage in the different activities that my fellow interns and I have led throughout the summer. Their enthusiasm and excitement is contagious! I love that I am a positive role model and someone that they can look up to when they come to camp each day. They are all so self-aware even at such a young age and have so much to offer in classroom conversations. They have shared stories about themselves and been extremely vulnerable about opening up to each other in the classroom about their own backgrounds and identities. For example, when my fellow interns and I led a group discussion on the different aspects of one’s identity this past week, all of the students were very respectful of each other’s feelings and not making judgements. I hope to be able to maintain the relationships that I have built with these students and I look forward to seeing them grow into strong individuals in the future.

Halena Martin ’20: The Innocence Project

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Name: Halena Martin
Class Year: 2020
Major: Political Science and Sociology
Hometown: Eatontown, N.J.

Internship Organization: Innocence Project
Job Title: Intake Intern
Location: New York City

What’s happening at your internship?

This summer I had the privilege of interning for the Innocence Project as a Liman Fellow. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. I am interning with the Intake Department which is tasked with weeding through the enormous number of requests for assistance that the Innocence Project receives (approximately 2,400 new requests per year). At any given time, the Innocence Project is evaluating between 6,000 and 8,000 potential cases.

As an intake intern, I assist with the identification and evaluation of cases for possible representation. My main responsibility is producing memoranda which include a summary of the facts, possible avenues for DNA testing to prove innocence, and my recommendation on whether the case should move forward to the legal department. The other intake interns and I report to the case analysts who review our work in biweekly meetings.

Interning at the Innocence Project has been an incredibly formative experience. It has exposed me to the early stages of post-conviction legal work, has deepened my understanding of the faults in our criminal justice system, and has helped me develop my reading, writing, and analytical skills.

Why did you apply for this internship?

In one of my classes last semester, my professor posed the question of whether the implicit risk of executing an innocent person makes the death penalty inherently immoral. This question really drew my attention to issues surrounding wrongful conviction. So, I knew when the Innocence Project came up in my internship search, it was the organization I wanted to intern with.

What is most rewarding about your internship?

There are numerous rewarding aspects of my internship. The most rewarding is the ability to do meaningful work. Not only am I able to be a part of an impactful organization, but I am given the opportunity to work hands-on with actual cases.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?

My biggest challenge has been the emotional work of reading through case documents. I read both the testimonies of people who have been the victims of heinous crimes and the letters from defendants who see the Innocence Project as their last hope. It has prepared me well for the areas of law I may go into in the future. It has also made me more appreciative of the downtime I got to spend with friends, family, and (especially) my puppy this summer!

Xenia Kibbelaar ’20: Historical Society of Pennsylvania

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Name: Xenia Kibbelaar
Class Year: 2020
Major: History
Hometown: Curaçao

Internship Organization: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Job Title: Volunteer
Location: Philadelphia

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I am a volunteer at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Center City, Philadelphia. For the 10 weeks that I am there, I have been working on a database project called the Encounters Database Project. This project consists of transcribing 19th century records and creating electronic versions of such records. The electronic versions will then be accessible online for the public to use. The records that I have been working with are those from am organization called Orphan Aid Society. The Orphan Aid Society was founded in 1814 and lasted until its merging with Elwyn School in 1965. This organization would take care of orphans or those that were fatherless. I worked on various records from 1846 to 1928.

I applied for this internship because I was interested in the Encounters Database project. I also wanted to learn more about archival work. Furthermore, I thought it would be interesting to spend the summer learning a little bit about the history of Pennsylvania, where I have been living for the past three years.

There are many skills that I am using and also learning at the same time. For instance, one of the biggest skills that I’m learning is how to read the handwriting. The handwriting from the 19th century is a lot different from the handwriting of today. So, at times, it can quite difficult to understand what was written. Besides the differences in how the letters are written, some entries can be so faded that they are hard to read. Thus, at times the entries are like a puzzle, you have to figure out what fits together and what doesn’t. Another skill that I’m learning is how to transcribe all the information found into the computer and how to organize all that information in a way that is accessible for people to use. Another skill that is incredibly important is patience. When working with a volume that’s hundreds of pages and covers several years, it is important to know that you will not finish it in days, but rather in weeks. I learned that with the first volume that I worked on that took me two to three weeks to complete. It is also the type of work where with time, you can see the results.

The most rewarding thing about the internship is seeing all the work that I have done. Knowing that I have done something that can help people have access to a small part of history that may have been inaccessible before is very rewarding.

 

Viktoriia Borodina ’21: Deutsche Bank

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Name: Viktoriia Borodina
Class Year: 2021
Major: Biology and Economics
Hometown: Novosibirsk, Russia

Internship Organization: Deutsche Bank
Job Title: Global Markets Summer Analyst
Location: New York City

What’s happening at your internship?

The Global Markets division is also known as Sales & Trading. Along with other sophomore interns, I have been assigned to two rotations across S&T — specifically, Asset-Backed Securities (Lender Finance) and Emerging Markets Trading & Structuring.

I was able to get involved with multiple projects for both of my rotations, getting to participate in all stages of credit structuring. For the Lender Finance group, for example, I was involved in deals with credit funds with up to U.S. $50 billion Assets Under Management. I worked with various credit models, composed internal credit memos and prepared marketing material for potential buyers of Deutsche Bank’s loans/facilities. For the Emerging Markets Trading & Structuring, I have sat on the trading floor for two weeks, learning about the various products offered by the trading desk — such as Latin American FX, Rates, and Credit.

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Why did you apply for this internship?

This summer I was fortunate to be selected for the dbAchieve internship designed specifically for sophomores of diverse backgrounds. I have applied because I am interested in pursuing a career in finance and was looking for an opportunity to define and narrow down my interests. I was further fascinated by the global nature of Deutsche Bank (DB) and wanted to experience what it’s like being a part of a multinational bank.

 

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

Being able to meet and get to know inspiring people throughout DB. I made sure that I networked extensively during my time here, both with people in my rotations and outside. Shadowing traders/salespeople was very insightful — I got to see what goes into their everyday trade decisions, and how exactly the markets work.

Talking to people has also helped me define my own interests, as I learned that I am more interested in project-based work compared to short day-to-day transactions.

I have greatly enjoyed working with my teams as well. Everyone was willing to help me learn and succeed at the internship. I was able to eventually comprehend some of the nuances of working on credit structuring and live deals, adding value to my team by working on some parts of their projects.

Living in a new city?

New York City is a fascinating place to spend a summer. There is just so much to do and explore. Although I have lived in big cities my entire life, I was impressed by how much is going on in NYC daily. Despite being busy during the week, I took full advantage of living in the city on the weekends – from exploring museums to local coffee shops, I was able to get a taste of what it’s like to live in New York (and I loved it!).

Marilyn Harbert ’20: RepresentWomen

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Name: Marilyn Harbert
Class Year: 2020
Major: Political Science
Hometown: Atlanta

Internship Organization: RepresentWomen
Job Title: Research Intern
Location: Takoma Park, Md.

marilyn

What’s happening at your internship?

This summer I am an intern at RepresentWomen, a nonprofit which does research and advocacy to increase women’s representation in politics. My focus is research on donations to federal political candidates, from PACs and individual donors, broken down by gender. It may sound dry, but it is exactly what I want to be doing this summer, as I get a chance to improve my skills in data analysis tools, and dive deep into systemic barriers that women candidates face.

Why did you apply for this internship?

2018 was fantastic for female candidates, but Congressional representation only rose from 20.6% to 23.7%. That level of progress is not enough. Only with systemic reforms can we ensure this progress is substantial and sustainable. That is why I chose to work for RepresentWomen, because I wanted to do research that helps push forward systemic reforms to make political gender parity a reality.

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

Campaign finance research mixes my two passions perfectly, politics and programming. As a political science major, my classes have prepared me to read the papers, do the writing and the research. But for me, it’s even more fun to stretch the programming skills that I developed through my computer science minor.

For this internship I have been learning Python and R, and developing critical new skills in data science. While my programming background has substantially reduced the learning curve on these languages, some days I still find myself wanting to bang my head against the table. So wish me luck, because I need it!

Although I may get frustrated at times, I am also reminded why I love to program. When everything runs smoothly and my graph finally loads, there’s nothing like the feeling of empowerment I get from seeing the results of my work outputted in my terminal.

What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn’t expect?

I did not expect to be in the halls of Congress, lobbying for bills on voting rights and free menstrual products for students.

My boss registered all of the interns for a conference run by IGNITE, an organization that trains and empowers young women to run for office. We were surrounded by dozens of inspiring young women and heard from Congresswomen including several boundary breakers: Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Deb Haaland, and Sharice Davids. Sessions on field engagement, media training, and fundraising made me start to think seriously about what a political campaign that I may run might look like. When I was told to look into a video camera, and declare my ambition to run for office, I started to actually believe it might happen.

The last day of the conference, we spent nervous hours rehearsing exactly how we’d pitch the chosen bills to our representatives. Before I knew it, I found myself sitting in U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s office, speaking passionately about voting rights to his chief of staff.

In the accompanying pictures, you can see me in front of the senate office building, with my fellow interns in front of the capitol, and with U.S. Rep. Pressley, excited to support women fighting for change in our country.

perdue

marilyn

Zhi Zheng ’20: ChangJiang Securities

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Name: Zhi Zheng
Class Year: 2020
Major: Mathematics
Hometown: Wuhan, China

Internship Organization: ChangJiang Securities
Job Title: investment management internship
Location: Wuhan, China

What’s happening at your internship?

This summer, I work as an intern at a securities company in Wuhan, China.
As a math major, I was assigned to the investment management department, where they need people to analyze data.

Why did you apply for this internship?

This company is a very famous securities company in China. As a math student minoring in economics, I feel like the financial industry is the right place for me. So I decide to apply for the role at a securities company, which I think would be helpful for my later career choice.

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

Communication plays a very critical role in investment management, especially when you negotiate with your clients. After participating in several meetings with my supervisor, I realized how people talk is much more complicated than I thought, such as how to persuade your colleagues and supervisor to support your strategy, how to negotiate with clients to make a win-win deal. Speaking is another kind of art; sometimes the way you express your statements can decide the outcome of the whole thing.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?

Our job is to find the potential companies which will be listed in the future and decide to invest a certain amount of money to help them speed-to-market. It is a challenge for me because as an analyzer, you not only need to understand data, but you also have to know quite well the industry to which your target company belongs. So for the first two weeks of the internship, I started studying the laser industry, reading numerous economic reports every week, and writing an industrial summary to my team. Thanks to the economics classes I took at Bryn Mawr, this work was not as hard as I thought.

After we got to know enough about the domestic laser industry, we started looking for some local laser companies which will be listed soon. This is a long process. Right now, our team is still working on it, and we have a list of potential companies which satisfy our requirements. Next step, our team will have a direct meeting with each company to further discuss our investment.

Madeleine Hall ’21: William Way LGBT Community Center

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Name: Madeleine Hall
Class Year: 2021
Major: Anthropology
Hometown: Bellingham, Wash.

Internship Organization: William Way LGBT Community Center
Job Title: Senior Programs Intern
Location: Philadelphia

This summer, I have the great opportunity to intern at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia, which just had its 45th anniversary. The Community Center exists to provide queer people and their allies with resources, support, and opportunities to better their lives. The Center provides a range of services from free peer counseling, support groups for, cheap yoga classes, recovery meetings, education about HIV and testing, and is a judgement free place to hang out 365 days a year. Along with all of this, it houses incredible art exhibitions (come visit now to see an amazing exhibition honoring the 50th anniversary of Stonewall), and the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives, which has the largest collection of LGBT ephemera in Philadelphia. I think anyone who is in the Gayborhood should stop in and visit, it truly is a wonderful place.

I found the William Way Center on an internet search for nonprofits in Philadelphia, emailed them a resume, and was referred to my current supervisor. After that, it was a quick decision, and I started going weekly in February before starting full time at the end of May. For my specific internship I am working under the Senior Programs Coordinator, who organizes a 50-plus gay men’s social group along with Access Services for the John C. Anderson Apartments. The JCA Apartments are around the corner from the Center, and is low income housing for 65-plus LGBTQ people. Even more specifically, the Center was awarded a grant to start a healthy eating program for the residents of JCA, and since my interests and background align with both food access and LGBT rights, the internship is a perfect match. My organization is on the small side, so I also do anything and everything, from marching in Philly’s Pride Parade to folding and cutting pamphlets.

The award winning gardens of the John C. Anderson Apartments, kept up by the residents.

The award winning gardens of the John C. Anderson Apartments, kept up by the residents.

My absolute favorite part of my internship is meeting and hearing the stories of the residents. In all honesty, I had never really considered my queer elders before, and now I realize that that was an oversight. Many of them grew up in deeply homophobic and transphobic communities, lost countless friends to violence, AIDS, and suicide, and the survivors are now being forgotten by their own community. As much as I love the queer community, so much of it idealizes and focuses on youth, and our elders are forgotten. Despite all this, the folks that I have met at John C. Anderson already feel like family to me. Growing up as a little queer kid, I never had queer elders to tell me about our history, the challenges they faced and surpassed, and now I fully believe that all young queer people should make an effort to talk to our elders. I have befriended a founder of the Gay Liberation Front, an incredible trans woman who was in a John Waters movie, and lovely gay couples who have been together for decades. As I am getting to know the residents, I am also learning so much about what it means to love, to have hope for a better future, and what it means to be a part of a community.

Amalia Jaimes-Lukes ’21: Heritage Farm

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Name: Amalia Jaimes-Lukes
Class Year: 2021
Major: Sociology
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Internship: Heritage Farm
Job Title: Intern
Location: Philadelphia

farm

Working at Heritage Farm is my dream internship. As a sociology major, much of my interest lies in making social change and studying what positive impacts people can make to communities.

Last summer, I worked my third summer at a day camp in New York City where I was asked to help start the gardening program for the campers. Along with my supervisor, we helped cultivate a vegetable garden and ran programming for children ages 4 to 13. Growing food was not something I had too much interest in until I began tending to the garden. As the summer went on, growing vegetables and teaching kids about sustainability was all I could think about. I had a growing passion for farming and gardening and a colleague recommended I visit an urban farm in Philadelphia while visiting friends one weekend. I attended the farm’s summer event and I learned all about the incredible community outreach work they do within their neighborhood to address issues of poverty, health, and food deserts. Immediately, I knew that the following summer I wanted to work at an urban farm in Philadelphia that worked within their community to make a change. Beginning in September, I had been researching, emailing, and visiting farms all throughout Philadelphia to learn more about what they do and how they contribute to their community or neighborhood. Through that research, I found Heritage Farm, which blew me away with the programs offered and the great impact they make on participants of Methodist Services and their greater community.

As I shifted my career goals after last summer, I am now looking to focus my sociological concentration in food justice. Through my sociology major I hope to be admitted to Bryn Mawr’s 4+1 program, where I can begin taking Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work classes during my senior year. With a social work degree, I can work at nonprofits like Methodist Services who help give access to resources like affordable housing, access to education, and access to fresh produce. My aspirations has shifted from being a general social worker to doing sustainability and food justice work in urban areas and food deserts because of how passionate I am about the subject.

I felt this internship would give me the opportunity to be fully immersed in the Philadelphia urban farming community, a community I would really love being a part of looking forward to a future career. It would also let me experience the reality of being an urban farmer and help me commit to the pursuit of this career.

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farm