Play hard, Network harder

I found my internship at a rooftop party hosted by Larry Fitzgerald in Phoenix, Arizona. The route to my internship was very unconventional, but a story worth telling.

I am a senior at Temple University majoring in Advertising on an art direction track with a minor in entrepreneurship. I am deeply rooted into the fine arts, beginning my college career at Tyler School of Art. Although art is no longer my major I still find myself creating pieces and curating art shows. I have been a part of shows in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta. I have always been accustomed to using my art not only as a tool to express myself, but to get into rooms I would other wise have no business in.

It was my junior year and I was stressing about finding an internship for the summer. I am a firm believer in putting our desires into the universe watching them come onto fruition (backed up with hard work of course). I met an entrepreneur named Rashaad Lambert of Sporty Marketing when he was speaking on a panel. As soon as the panel ended I rushed to him explaining how I need a summer internship.  He told me to email him but I didn’t feel confident about my resume at that time and I promised myself I would not send it out until I knew it was up to par.

I was invited to volunteer at Larry Fitzgerald’s Celebrity Softball Game in Phoenix that following April. Of course I would not have attended without bringing a custom painting for the all start athlete. As the weekend went by it was to my surprise that I ran into Rashaad accompanying Chill Moody, an Philadelphia artist he works with. He was a player on one of the celebrity baseball teams. At this point I just finished perfecting my resume and could not stop bragging about it to everyone I came into contact with, so I knew I had to connect with Rashaad before I headed back to Philly. It was at an after party once all the festivities completed that I finally got a chance to mingle with everyone who was part of the event – a rooftop party alongside celebrities including Jordin Sparks, Terrell Owens and Larry Fitzgerald just to name a few. I found myself boasting all night long about how beautiful my resume was. Looking back I might’ve been a been a bit obnoxious but you know what they say… “you miss 100% percent of the shots you don’t take”.

I finally got a chance to converse with Rashaad after showing about six people my resume and he immediately mentioned Felicia D. Harris, a good friend of his who owned a marketing company. He told me to send over my resume and he would forward it to her. I wasted no time, emailing my information before I stepped foot out of the party. The very next morning I received a call from Felicia about an internship position. We scheduled a meeting for the position for the very next day. I hopped off of my flight from Philadelphia, took a couple of hours to recuperate, and went straight to the interview.

I am now interning at HiTouch enterprises, a small marketing company specializing in event planning, branding and fundraising for nonprofits. This experience taught me three things:

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.
2. Don’t be afraid to show someone why you deserve what you want.
3. Don’t be afraid to network at any moment, take advantage of every opportunity presented to you.

Always remember…

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” -Theodore Roosevelt

Find more of my work at: Dwhppart.com