My name is Adrienne Lee and I am a Strategic & Corporate Communication major and Entrepreneurship minor. I interned at Wear The Future the Spring semester of my sophomore year. Wear The Future is a small sustainable fashion PR agency based in Los Angeles. I found about the internship and the company through Handshake while exploring opportunities for the coming Summer.

With my interest in fashion, I thought this internship would be a perfect opportunity for me to expand my marketing and communication skills in an industry I possibly want to pursue a career in after graduation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I didn’t get a chance to physically work at the office. Fortunately, however, my supervisor, Annabelle Azade, allowed me to work remotely from home. Throughout my internship, my responsibilities were to research and build data on influencers, stylists, brands, and their contacts. I also managed the company’s Instagram for a week and wrote blog posts for the company’s website.

Many of the basic concepts from my first few communication classes helped me better understand the overall goal of my work. For example, in SCC 100 with Travis Bartosh, I learned that mission statements reflect an organization’s purpose and are statements that you should always come back to. One has to make sure that any task or campaign correctly reflects the organization’s identity. This helped me in my blog writing to always make sure that I was conveying the right message to the target audience.

Throughout the internship, I dealt with massive sets of data which I made a priority to keep organized. The skill of organization, whether it be physical or digital items is something I perfected with the tasks I was given. Organizing is now something I make a priority in my classes as well. I’ve realized that it minimizes my stress knowing every document and paper has its place. My writing skills have also improved greatly from the opportunities to write blogs about different topics regarding the sustainable fashion and beauty industry. I was tasked to write a blog post connecting the topic of COVID-19 with sustainable fashion. In this process, I had to brainstorm angles that would smoothly connect both topics while focusing on delivering the correct message. Through tasks like these, my thinking, research, and writing skills have all matured.

My supervisor Annabelle was very flexible and open to hearing any ideas I had for the company and concepts to take my tasks to the next level. Not only was I able to learn her daily routine of running her company and see her communication skills with employees and clients, but I was also able to give her a fresh perspective on ideas to further grow and develop her company.

Doing a remote internship was a different experience. For those who are interested in this type of work, remember that communication can change your relationship with your supervisor in terms of clarity and expanding the kinds of tasks you can do. With clear communication and enthusiasm for the internship, the amount of knowledge and experience you can attain will teach you skills you will use in future internship and job opportunities.