Hello. My name is Megan Schwartzmeyer, and I'm going to talk a little bit about my internship with New Sector Alliance. I'm going to start off by shedding some light about the interview process, which I learned a lot about. And for any of you who are interested in pursuing internships in the future, I'm hoping that this will be helpful for you in knowing how to go about presenting yourself to a potential employer. And then I'm going to talk about a very important lesson that I learned in how to design a project that is your own project that you need to develop a timeline for, and how to initiate that project and complete that project to the best of your ability. 

So first off, I want to explain what New Sector Alliance is. It's really confusing to explain, so I made this nice little illustration here with the umbrella. So the umbrella is New Sector Alliance. So under that, there were networking events that I got to do. There was social sector trainings, mentoring, and a host site project. 

The host site project made up the bulk of my experience and was the regular 9 to 5, what I did every day. But about once every week we had social sector training that were specifically for mentoring the social sector. So we went over how to look at budgets, how to fundraise, how to be a good manager, and how to deal specifically with the social sector. 

And then the mentoring was really phenomenal. All of us were paired with a mentor, either in the social sector or the private sector. My mentor was in the private sector. She was in an advertising company, and she was fantastic and so helpful. I learned so much from her. 

And then the networking events, a lot of companies would put on networking events specifically for us. So they would open up their doors to us and they would give presentations about why we should work for them or whatever it might be. So it was really a great opportunity to figure out a lot of different careers that I could pursue with the social sector. 

So a little bit about interviewing. I learned a lot about this because not only did I interview for a lot of different internships, but once I got into New Sector, I had to interview for different projects. So I got to interview for a lot of different jobs, a lot of different positions. So I learned quite a bit about the process, which is really great for me now, looking to apply for jobs-- for "big kid" jobs as they say. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So the most important part, I think, is the preparation. I like to ask myself these three questions. So what is the mission of the organization? What position are you applying for? And what is unique about you that you can bring to the position? So how can you bridge the mission and the position you're applying for and yourself to make a really unique statement about how you fit into the organization? 

The next part is practice. I learned to memorize the beginning of the answers to these questions, so that when I get nervous-- because I will-- I can just start and go through what my initial answers were to the questions and then sort of think while I'm answering them. 

And then ask good questions, and do your research on the questions, because really questions are a good opportunity for you to ask about things you are generally concerned about or that you want to know more about, but also to show that you have done your research. And it's an evaluation of you as well. 

So my project was with Massachusetts Housing Partnership, which is an affordable housing organization right in Boston. So the bulk of my project was to create a database for affordable housing trusts. Now nothing at all was really known about these trusts previous to me coming in. So it was a lot of pressure and a lot of learning. 

I didn't know anything about affordable housing going into this. And that was really intimidating because I had to learn the jargon. And everyone else knew except for me, and they wanted me to do something about it-- something that nobody else in the organization had done before. So that was a big-- it made me sort of anxious in the beginning, I guess. 

So basically, I had to figure out, first off, which municipalities in Massachusetts had these trusts. So I had to call 184 towns in Massachusetts, literally by the phone or email, and say, do you know if you have these trusts? And then a lot of people said, I don't know. So I had to keep calling people and calling people. 

And once I figured out who had trusts and who didn't, I had to figure out how much money was involved, where the money is going-- who is in charge of this money. So it was a lot of responsibility going in. And then at the very end, I had to figure out where this organization should proceed with these trust activities-- whether they should oversee them or where they should stand. So it was sort of like a consulting position. 

And then at the very end, I researched specifically three different towns in Massachusetts that I thought were doing good things with their trust monies and that they could really be a good example for other communities who might not know exactly how to approach this. So that involved doing really in-depth interviews with municipal employees and then actually going to the site and taking pictures of different projects. 

So what I learned is designing a project can be kind of difficult. But I think these three questions can really help-- or these three points could really help. First off, what does the end product look like? What do you see the end being? I think that's really important because then you can have your mind fixed on that one end product, but also be ready for that to change, because it might. 

And then, what are goals? I had three goals throughout the process that I said, OK, I'm going to get to this point first. I'm going to put all my energy on this point, and then the next point, and then the next point so that I make sure I get everything done and that I'm not way too overwhelmed. 

And then this was the most important part-- going over your plans with your supervisor. Because I found that I would go to my supervisor, and I would tell her what I was doing, and I would repeat everything she said to make sure I had it all. And she would say, great. That's great. That's fantastic. 

I would do all my research. I'd come back to her. And she'd be like, yeah, you know, that's not really what I want anymore. I had to go back to a lot just to make sure I wasn't wasting time. So that was huge for me. 

So what I learned was there are a lot of different writing styles. Part of my project was doing different one-page profiles about these different in-depth case studies that I did. And I had to be very specific to a type of writing that was going to engage the community, which isn't necessarily academic writing. 

I wrote all of these out like I would write a paper for a class, and I thought it was fine. And then they brought it back to me and they were like, no one is going to understand this. So I had to go back through and learn how to write to my audience, which was really, really important. And I'm really glad I got to do that. 

I also learned that I love research. I kind of already knew this because I had the opportunity to do some gender studies research with a professor and just absolutely loved the process. But I learned that maybe I don't like research in this setting. It was a lot of-- they just wanted a very general overview of what the trusts were doing, and I was interested in community engagement. I wanted to ask them questions about how were these projects developed? What is the community involvement like? And they didn't really want to know that. And I saw that as being very, very important. But they didn't really see it as part of their objective. So I learned that I love to do research where I can sort of pursue what I think is important and just learn as I go. 

And then I also learned how to be critically engaged with the social sector. The trainings were really great in giving me an overview of what the sector is. But I didn't necessarily always agree with everything. 

And being a Mount Holyoke student, we're challenged to ask a lot of questions. And I had a lot of questions. And I learned how to be critically involved in the sector in a way that's beneficial, in a way that doesn't necessarily throw up your hands, but doesn't just give into it the way that it is. 

So that was my internship, and I hope it was really helpful. And I would like to thank Zach [INAUDIBLE] from New Sector, as well as all of my coworkers at Massachusetts Housing Partnership. They were fantastic and really helpful. So thank you. 

[APPLAUSE]