SOAR365 Spring Social Media Intern
In the fall of 2022, interning at a human services non-profit was not necessarily a part of Janani Sathish’s career plans. As a VCU sophomore pursuing degrees in marketing and finance, her ambitions leaned more toward somehow combining her majors with her passions – dance, lifestyle, fashion, and travel. Then she ran across SOAR365 while researching internships and “found it interesting. The environment seemed really friendly, and I decided that it would be a good thing to have this experience and learn more about helping people with disabilities, mainly because I’ve never done that before.”
In January, she hit the ground running as SOAR365’s spring social media intern and, according to Communications and Public Relations Manager Andrea Siebentritt, “Janani has been helping the Marketing/Communications department so much. She puts together many of our social media posts, coordinates the posting schedule, and helps us evaluate the analytics. We certainly couldn’t do all we do without Janani on the team.”
From Janani’s perspective, it has also turned out to be a real win-win. “I love how hands on it is! I was initially nervous, but I’ve learned so much about the organization, its programs, and the people in them. I love posting about fun activities that the Adult Day Support or the Children and Youth participants do. A fun post I did recently was about the Adult Day participants visit to the General Assembly for Developmental Disabilities day, and it was really cool to see all that they accomplished!”
Not only is she having fun, but she’s acquiring all kinds of skills that will be useful to her as a future marketing professional. “One big aspect of this internship is self-management, because it’s fully remote. I have plenty of help, but I am also learning to hold myself responsible. I’m also getting a lot of experience with social media management software, excel, and photo editing software, which is cool.”
Janani’s advice to other students: “Don’t be intimidated! If you don’t have anyone in your life that has disabilities, that’s totally okay! It’s definitely not a requirement to work here. The environment is super fun and accommodating, so you have a lot of time to get to know everyone and everything. It’s so satisfying to create content for a company that has an important mission behind it so that I can help spread the message!”