Hamilton IMPACT 2021

THE EMAIL FROM THE CAREER CENTER brought glad tidings last summer to Hannah Terao ’23, who was home in Riverside, Calif., her plans erased by the pandemic. “I had been stuck in the house for a couple of months, and I was just itching for something to do because I’m the type of person who needs to work on something,” Terao says.

The email offered the prospect of an internship with SHE Media, whose CEO is Samantha Skey ’94. Skey was a supporter of the Career Center’s new Snap micro-internship program, designed to provide shortterm, pandemic-proof internships built around specific projects. Snap gave students facing a summer without internships or jobs valuable work experience.

SHE Media, a digital media company that focuses on women and includes several lifestyle websites, hired 10 or so Hamilton students. “The Hamilton students have been really productive. I think those who found their way to us were really interested in and invested in career development,” Skey says. Terao is a creative writing major who hopes to tutor at Hamilton’s Writing Center. “I had taken an introductory communications course my freshman year, and I really enjoyed it, so I thought that working with a media company might be something that I would also enjoy and something that I’d be interested in,” she says.

She did. Writing stories for SHE Media websites was much different than the academic writing Terao was familiar with. “But I managed to get a couple articles published on some of SHE Media’s websites, which was, I think, a good learning experience and also something great to put on my résumé,” she says.

Last winter Terao had a shot at a second Snap internship. She handled publicity for Songs of the Suffragists: Lyrics of American Feminism from 1850 to 2020, a book written by Laura Castelblanco Englehardt ’95 for the League of Women Voters of Berkeley Heights, New Providence, and Summit, in New Jersey.

“I was able to work independently, but also still learn because I was being obviously supervised,” Terao says. “But my supervisor, Laura, let me do what I thought was best and kind of experiment and try out new things, and then she would give me feedback, and I was able to go back and revise and learn from that.”

The Snap internship program was a success from the Career Center’s perspective, too. Last summer and during winter break, it resulted in internships for 85 students from 72 alumni or parents. n