Week 6- Personal Contribution

Earlier this week, my boss asked me to prep him on a meeting that he was having with a big potential donor. I found this organization’s philanthropic work really interesting and asked him to keep me updated on the status of the meeting. The next day, my boss actually asked me to brainstorm some ideas that this organization could implement in order to advance economic advancement throughout the city of Richmond. I was excited because I spend most of my days at the office thinking through new strategies and policies for the city. As a result, I decided to rework some of these ideas to align with this organization’s desired impact and goal. I presented my idea to my boss at the end of the day and he loved it! It made me happy that my idea was well received because my boss is always incredibly busy…. in other words, I do not get as much time to sit down with him and go through ideas as I would like to. However, after this proposal, I know that he trusts me and values what I bring to the table even more. He even asked me to formally type up my proposal so that he could run it by other people before presenting to the organization. I know I am just an intern, but I study a lot and think hard about creative ideas, which made it even better that my boss liked what I brought to the table. Furthermore, I would like more opportunities to tangibly create policy and strategy. Most of the work that I do is very broad… these are goals for 2030, this is how we can get there. But, I really enjoyed working with one specific project because I feel that it helped me perfect my ideas even more since they were based in a real life scenario. I would like to contribute to my office even more through specific projects and believe that many of my ideas can create real positive change for Richmond. For example, my office has bi-weekly meetings where each department updates everyone on their progress. In the future, I would like to examine some of these departmental issues (ex. food banks are experiencing a diminishing food supply due to online ordering platforms) and try to come up with new policy given the real time crisis. Overall, as my internship progresses, I am finding new ways to actually contribute to the office and know that this one idea will not be the end.