Wrapping Up My Internship With Planned Parenthood

My summer working with Planned Parenthood was incredible. I was able to draw real-world experience while developing my professional skills. I have gained both hard and soft skills from Photoshop and Canva to communication and leadership. A job that I am probably most proud of is creating and rebranding slides to go into our lobby waiting rooms and personally jumpstarting our Back to School Campaign. I spent the majority of my last weeks with Planned Parenthood on these projects and my hard work and dedication paid off when presenting my work to the CEO one afternoon. She was impressed with the professional manner I displayed my presentation and was pleased with my graphics.

My experience was so positive that I enrolled in a communication course called “Media and Reproductive Rights.” I want to continue growing my knowledge of topics such as equality, the wage gap, and reproductive rights so this class was the perfect next step for me. I loved the experience of working with a nonprofit organization and felt so accomplished leaving work each day knowing that my work would help make someone’s life a little easier.

The advice I would give to someone wanting to work for a nonprofit and Planned Parenthood specifically is to always ask questions, be ready to take on any and every type of job and to be accepting of everyone around you.

My concepts of gender and social justice has positively been reinforced through working for such a positive and encouraging work environment. I always felt accepted and important and never judged. I want to take this as I move forward in my college and professional careers to ensure that I am always treated with the level of respect I was given at Planned Parenthood. I am so thankful that one of my first experiences set such a high standard for my future workplace environments.

Overall, I feel I have successfully met, and in some cases surpassed, my expectations and goals for this internship. I am so thankful for everyone at NCI who made this happen and I look forward to working with them moving forward with my college career.