Listen to Imani (2020) talk about her summer internships at various nonprofit organizations.

Stephanie: Hi there. You're listening to Gear Up the Duke Career Centers student produced podcasts showcasing real students summer internship experiences. My name's Stephanie Mayle.

Stephanie: And today we're talking to Imani about her experience interning at nonprofits.

Stephanie: OK. Can you introduce yourself?

Imani: My name is Imani Hicks. I'm a senior I was going to say im a senior at Duke University. I'm a senior studying public policy, and then I'm getting two certificates, the first one human rights and the second one in Latin American studies.

Stephanie: And so what have you done the past few summers?

Imani: So my freshman summer, I worked in the public affairs department at like a development corporation. So they worked for a bunch of different companies, I did a lot of PR and I was just the intern there, and then the second is my sophomore summer, so I did Duke Engage in Seattle and that's nonprofit based. I worked with like a grassroots nonprofit in the city, and then last summer or this year, this past summer, I worked at a mental behavioral health nonprofit that specialized in working with urban natives.

Stephanie: So you've done a lot of nonprofit?

Stephanie: Yeah, that sounds like a thing.

Imani: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie: So what kind of drew you to that? Like, why did you continue doing the work?

Imani: I came into Duke thinking I was gonna do econ and I realized after taking econ one to one, I didn't like that and so I started exploring my interest, and my mom's a social worker, like my grandma also worked in nonprofits pretty much all her life, did like a HR working with people and I was like, oh, that's what I really want to do, and at first I thought I'd like to do in the private sector. And so I worked with the Public Affairs Department, which is PR, and was a lot of like doing press releases and just interacting with the board, and I liked it , but then I was like, you know what? I rather just work directly, with people. I also picked up human rights as a certificate. I was like, I really want to work with helping people. That was my overall theme.

Imani: So my sophomore year, I applied for Duke Engage. Got that. And then I was like deeply involved in nonprofit work and was like a grassroots organization that I want. You know, I don't really like the grassroots. It's a little bit. I'm not going to say unorganized, but it's just very on the go. On the fly and so then I worked last summer at sort of a traditional nonprofit.

Stephanie: So let’s focus on last summer.

Imani: So, yeah.

Stephanie: What kind of role did you have specifically?

Imani: So what the nonprofit is right now. So they just got a bunch of grant money and it's a bunch of clinical psychologist and they're right now working and doing research on the opioid epidemic and how it affects like urban native communities, specifically in L.A. and Minneapolis, but because we just got all this grant funding and they're sort of a newer nonprofit, they wanted to enter into kind of, it was closer to what a startup would be. It was a lot of like ground work ,and so even though technically I think my titles like Summer Intern with the focus and like mental behavioral health l, I did a little bit of everything. So it was a lot of just like creating a Facebook page to, organizing a lot of like the research, a little bit of everything I got to do stuff with like website development, which I had no idea that world existed. I knew I had too but I had, no idea about it, and just looking more like the clinical side of non-profits is really interesting. Working with all doctors because I feel like , they just approach the world differently.

Stephanie: So how did you find this organization?

Imani: So I'm public policy. So I need my internship and so I reached out to like people at home. It was really just putting out my feelings like even li