Internship at the Roosevelt Institute – Hayley Brundige
This summer I worked as the communications intern for the Roosevelt Institute in New York City. As a Summer Academy Fellow for Roosevelt, I had daily duties with the communications team (working with their website, social media and distributing the white papers written by their senior fellows) but I also worked with a group of four other Summer Academy Fellows on a policy piece, in what Roosevelt calls a Team Based Challenge.
Our piece focused on the inclusion of English Language Learners in the city’s charter schools, specifically looking at the South Bronx. Roosevelt puts a huge emphasis on solving hyper-local problems through policy, so that was our task with the policy piece. At the end of the summer, we presented our pieces at a policy expo in front of judges that included two staffers from the Center for Social Inclusion, a budget analyst at the city’s Office of Management and Budget, and Brittny Saunders, the deputy counsel to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. They analyzed our policy pieces and gave us advice on how to better approach the problems we researched.
Throughout the summer, we also had several workshops on leadership, public speaking, community organizing, etc. It was a full-time job, plus some, but it was definitely worth it! I learned a lot about policy and made many connections with people that I still talk to today. Also, I learned how to get an apartment in Brooklyn, pay rent and get around on the subway system, which is really a job in itself.