My AP Journey: An Internship Reflection

I’m Hani, a rising senior at Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston, MA. Through a high school workforce development program at Flare Education, I had the opportunity to spend six weeks as a Marketing team intern at Acceleration Partners (AP). As my internship ends, I am happy to have had this chance to develop new skills that will enable me to achieve more in the future.

Embracing relationships during my AP experience

Because AP is a fully remote organization, I completed my internship from home. However, despite not being in person, I worked with many people during the six-week session.

Prior to my first day I met with AP’s Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Esteverena, when she came to talk with Flare Education. During the internship, I attended a number of Marketing team and company-wide video calls, and also had daily check-in meetings with my manager, Jen Hoye.

I also had the pleasure of speaking with the CEO of Acceleration Partners, Matt Wool during a zoom call. Being personally welcomed by the CEO was an unexpected but happy surprise.

Learning to “Own It” through projects, feedback, and coaching

I imagined my first professional internship to be spent working all day without a break, writing emails, and completing assignments. I quickly learned that this was not so, and my daily schedule would not be one of boring routine.

I worked on a number of projects, including:

• Learning about the AP brand, then sourcing on-brand images that the team could utilize for the website, social media, or in projects
• Researching how other marketing businesses and industries use social media websites and applications to reach a wider audience
• Writing weekly reflections, which I used to help form this blog post

Because of the consistent feedback I received, these assignments helped me further develop my own research and writing skills.

As I wrote above, Jen and I had a scheduled daily meeting to go over my assignments for the day. She shared professional best practices and gave me pointers and suggestions on many aspects of the office environment. Jen has been a big help with all my tasks and has been kind and patient with how I’ve been doing with each.

Throughout my experience, Flare Education has remained connected with me and has provided me with a significant amount of advice and guidance.

Using my AP experience to “Excel & Improve”

I believe the experience I had throughout my six weeks with AP will be one that will benefit me far into my future. I’ve learned a lot about the working world via my time at AP that I never knew before.

AP has three core values: Embrace Relationships, Own It, and Excel & Improve. During my internship, I was able to experience each of these.

• Embrace Relationships – My time at AP has taught me the value of teamwork and collaboration.
• Own It – The independent assignments that I worked on supported the Marketing team and AP as a whole, showing me how vital everyone is to the organization and the amount of effort that goes into every project.
• Excel & Improve – Through the various coaching sessions and meetings, I was able to develop my communications and time management skills and learned ways to be creative in a business setting.

The skills you develop, the relationships you create, and the experiences you gain through Flare Education’s workforce development program all have a profoundly positive impact on your life and may help students achieve their goals. I am thankful to have had this internship with AP through Flare Education. I believe that this experience will expand my opportunities and it has given me a chance to pinpoint and take steps toward accomplishing my future goals.

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Author: Hani Ibrahim