shaffer


Digital Fellow, Mothership Strategies

Major: GVPT

Class Year: 2022

LinkedIn Profile

 


 

 

What was a typical week like in your internship position?

I was on the campaigns team that was in charge of around ten digital fundraising campaigns for gubernatorial and congressional candidates. I would do edit checklists of every email before it went out to make sure all the links were active and there were no mistakes. I would also code a few emails to match the campaign’s aesthetic.

 

 

What do you enjoy most about your current position?

I really liked how tangible the work I was doing was. It was always so exciting to get the final email sent to me when it officially launched through the listserv because I knew how hard my  team worked on it.

 

 

How did your coursework help you in your internship?

This internship helped me refine my coding skills as I was working on designing basic HTML for emails and ads. I really enjoyed political statistics in GVPT 201 so doing this internship after taking the class was super helpful and also helped me prepare for taking another GVPT class that involved coding.

 

 

How did you locate your internship position?

An alumna of UMD and the Student Government Association reached out to current members of the organization with the job posting.

 

 

Advice for students:

My advice is to not be afraid to communicate with your team about what you want to do with your internship. If there is something that you really want to experience during your time at the organization you should tell the person in charge because they are there to support you as well. Coding emails was my favorite part of my internship and I was afraid to ask for more experience doing that at first, but once I asked they were always happy to make that a focus of my time at work.