February Monthly Meeting: Internship Panel
On Wednesday, February 14th, Women’s Leadership Initiative held our annual Internship Panel event in preparation for the Saint Joseph’s University Career Fair. For this panel, we hand-picked four inspiring women on campus who have completed or are currently completing fascinating internships or professional experiences.
Our first panelist was Eshika Attri, one of the communication team members for WLI. Eshika talked about her experiences as an intern at Chobani in New York City. In this position, which she has held since August, she honed her data analysis skills and other analytical skills, while connecting with established professionals in the field and discerning her future career goals and aspirations. Eshika also talked about her journey with perfecting her interviewing skills and emphasized that it is all about practice and tailoring your interview to best fit the specific company (and doing your research on your interview ahead of time)!
Mia Messina, a junior English and Communication Studies major, was another one of our panelists. She currently works at the Philadelphia Inquirer as a Sports Desk Intern covering Saint Joseph’s University athletics. Mia had so much incredible insight about exploring what type of job fields would like to work in as well as working as a media correspondent covering the historically male-dominated field of athletics.
Another panelist who shared their internship experience was Bella Privitera, one of WLI’s co-presidents. Bella served as a Judicial Intern with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania last summer. She discussed the value of learning from a diverse set of professionals in the field you would like to pursue and echoed Eshika’s points on the importance of networking when looking for internships.
Our final panelist was Tahlia Fedee. Tahlia is a sophomore studying Criminal Justice and Public Policy who is currently serving as a Legislative Intern with the City of Philadelphia. She provided many interesting anecdotes on managing interpersonal relationships with co-workers throughout the internship experience and elaborated on how important networking is to helping you find and secure internships.
This conversation allowed our panelists to share their valuable experiences and unique perspectives to help our audience understand various components of the college internship journey. We hope that this panel was especially helpful for first-generation and low-income college students, as many times students with these identities struggle with where to begin when applying for and securing internships. As always, it is incredibly important to recognize the intersectionality of gender and other identities in the professional world. I would like to express my deep gratitude to all of our wonderful panelists who took the time to share their stories with our audience as well as my amazing co-organizer for this event, Hannah Pajtis, who truly made sure this panel was a success!