Name: Chloe Stephenson-Brown
Class Year: 2026
Major: Undeclared
Hometown: Tempe, AZ
Internship Organization: Phoenix Sister Cities
Job Title: Marketing Intern
Location: Phoenix, AZ
What's happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
At my internship, I am working as the marketing intern for Phoenix Sister Cities, which is a nonprofit organization with a mission of creating and sustaining relationships between Phoenix residents and Phoenix’s sister cities around the world to promote international relations and emphasize the importance of international education and inclusion. Phoenix currently has eleven official sister cities in Canada, Italy, China, Ireland, France, Mexico, Japan, the Czech Republic, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. Phoenix Sister Cities is also a part of the city of Phoenix’s Office of Protocol, so they are publicly affiliated and are the city’s primary contact for delegations representing government, cultural organizations, and trade from around the world. As the marketing intern, my day-to-day responsibilities include running the social media pages, publicizing upcoming events, and generally raising awareness of Phoenix Sister Cities as an organization. My two larger projects throughout the summer are transferring and updating information for a new website and working on a larger publicizing campaign for PSC’s youth ambassador summer exchange program, in which Phoenix high schoolers go abroad to sister cities for three weeks, and then bring their international counterparts back to Phoenix during the summer. The youth ambassadors arrive next week, so things will start ramping up, and we’ll all be out of the office more, working on making those events run smoothly.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because I had experience handling communications and social media at a smaller local nonprofit and was interested in expanding my nonprofit experience, specifically within the municipal government framework and exploring public-private partnerships. I’ve never worked in a traditional office setting before, so the idea of that new experience was appealing to me, as well as the affiliation with the City of Phoenix and local governmental services, in which I have very little experience. Phoenix Sister Cities' internship program is also very personalized - they make sure interns get to explore other fields they're interested in and make contacts within the city government, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore and learn more about potential career paths and roles within both nonprofits and local government.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
My favorite part of this internship has been the people I’ve met. The Sister Cities office is relatively small – there are four full-time staff members, and I work with two other interns. Due to the size, we tend to work together on many projects that fall into multiple realms. Furthermore, the staff are flexible and invested in the interns’ success and happiness and really treat this as a learning opportunity for us, letting us choose our own projects and attend all sorts of different events, from local board meetings to Zoom meetings with other countries.
What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn't expect?
I think I wasn't expecting to have so much freedom - both creative freedom in how I design social media posts and graphics, as well as the freedom to choose a specific project that I wanted to work on. This freedom and being actively encouraged to share my own ideas has boosted my ability to confidently share suggestions and discuss my thoughts without feeling self-conscious. This freedom has also helped me work on my own self-direction and judgement. At the beginning of my internship, I asked a lot of questions (which is good! It's great for developing relationships and learning about others' work styles and preferences), but many of these were questions that I knew the answer to and doubted myself or searched for a second opinion. Through the last few weeks, I've learned to trust my own instinct and judgments when it comes to simple things, like the color or wording of a social media post, which I wasn't expecting to happen so quickly.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.