Portland Internship Experience Fast Becoming a UO Student Favorite

Hailey Yang (Business Administration, '24) just happened to see a posting about the Portland Internship Experience on one of the information monitors in the Lillis Complex while walking to class one day.

The destination and description piqued her interest right away.

“I’m from Portland, so that’s where I’d be looking anyway,” Yang explained. “And I liked the idea of working with a small business or nonprofit."

The Portland Internship is fast becoming one of the most popular student choices. The program has two objectives: remove financial barriers to the traditional unpaid internship for students, and connect small and nonprofit Portland employers with a mission of positive societal impact with UO students.

With donor support, the Portland Internship Experience provides stipends to students, in addition to comprehensive support through every step of their internship experience.

“The PIE team provided a lot of resources and support,” said Yang. “There were information sessions and a three-day orientation where we went over what to expect, talked about imposter feelings, and advocating for yourself.”

Yang took an internship with the St. Johns Center for Opportunity managing social media marketing for their farmer’s market. The organizations mission is to stimulate economic growth in Portland through support for small businesses and start-ups. Going into her internship, the employer worked with her to find an area of work that would align with her professional goals.
With an interest in social media marketing for a food brand, the farmer’s market was a perfect fit.

Over the course of ten weeks, Hailey helped create new and fresh content for the market’s website and social media accounts.

“I started with analytics of their target market, research of other farmer’s markets accounts—seeing what posts got engagement,” explained Yang. “I learned that posts featuring people, verses shots of produce, received more engagement.”

Yang also helped hire a BIPOC photographer, in alignment with the organizations mission of economic growth and support of underrepresented small businesses, and staffed a photo shoot of the market.

The experience confirmed for Yang her desire to work in social media marketing.

“Before the internship I didn’t understand the power of social media but seeing it from the back end was really interesting, it was a really fun experience getting to be creative and try new things.”