I have the great pleasure of writing a blog regarding my internship at Impact this year. My name is Thrmiga Sathiyamoorthy and I have been working as the Outreach Coordinator under the leadership of Shane Hebel. These past few weeks working as an intern flew by very fast due to the amount of learning that I encountered. One thing to keep in mind as any intern is to always keep close contact with your supervisor, head advisor, or whoever  that is supporting you. I am very glad that I had Shane there for me all along. Tam and Susie repeatedly told us to use your mentors to help make the most of your internship, and I can confidently say that they are right. That is because these mentors have “been in the business” (at least longer than me) and they know the tricks and trade of it. My main responsibility at Impact was to create new partnerships while maintaining existing ones with other entrepreneurial media centres such as blogs, and magazines. I started my internship by compiling a list of possible partnerships, with no particular selection process. Thanks to Sprouter, I was able to get a hold of many start-up companies. While completing the list, I wondered why Impact needed so many partnerships? Was it not big enough? Sounded like a stupid question to me, but I needed to know why I was making this list. So once again, I contacted Shane (probably for the hundredth time) and asked him. Surprisingly, his answer was not as I anticipated it to be. He told me that by creating these partnerships we would be increasing Impact’s online presence and when we contact other companies we would have more credibility. Simple right? Well, it took me a little longer. Once I finished the list, I started writing the letter/e-mail I would contact these companies with. At first, it seemed like a lot of work. But to my excitement, it got much easier. 

This experience reminded me of another volunteer work I have done at school. Except at school I wasn’t called the “Outreach Coordinator”, I was just another student pulling together a conference. So basically, what I’m trying to say is don’t be afraid of the title you hold. When Shane first told me my title at Impact, I was actually dumbfounded. Me— Outreach Coordinator — it had a special ring to it. But soon I learned it was not much different than what I do in student council. Regardless, this experience is incomparable to what I have done at school. I learned so much about myself through this internship and now have great respect for entrepreneurship.

I would like to thank Impact for giving me the opportunity to work for you. Impact made this August worthwhile. 

P.S I went to Shad UBC (best campus in my opinion!)