MFJS Students Complete PR Internships

Several MFJS students completed internships in the public relations industry this fall, working in-person and remotely for a variety of organizations. Two of those students – Grace Pepin and Olivia Myrtue – shared their experiences with us.

Grace Pepin
Senior strategic communication major

Last fall quarter, I was a PR and social media intern for Backbone Media, an outdoor lifestyle agency. I’ve been unsure about my career path for quite some time, but when I found Backbone, I knew I was headed on the right path. This was my first internship experience, and I absolutely loved it. I grew up a ski racer in a mountain town and always knew that I wanted my career path to take off somewhere in the outdoor industry. 

During my application process, I noticed that Backbone prided themselves on using passion not only for their work, but as a lifestyle. After working there, I can guarantee that they uphold these standards. The overall atmosphere of Backbone was amazing; they have around 80 people on their team, and they are all interested in the outdoors and maintaining a healthy and happy lifestyle. The company engages with many popular outdoor brands like Eddie Bauer, Chaco, CAKE, and more, and I was able to work on roughly 22 projects with around 10 different brands.  

My projects allowed me to see the behind the scenes of what goes into Instagram posts as I contacted writers to increase each companies’ engagement and overall attention from consumers. I enjoyed being able to apply what I have learned from my strategic communication courses in the actual real world. Although I know have a lot more to learn, I am more than impressed and happy with my time at Backbone. I am thrilled with the relationships I created and will always remember how excited these people were to be working there. 

Olivia Myrtue
Senior strategic communication major

This fall, I had the opportunity to intern for Slate PR, a full-scale entertainment public relations firm based in Los Angeles and New York. Throughout my internship, I worked alongside the events team at Slate and gained hands-on experience working on high-scale events within the entertainment industry. Each week, my day-to-day tasks were different. I drafted talent invite lists, researched appropriate talent to invite to events, sent out press releases for clients and pitched to journalists for event coverage. I had the opportunity to see firsthand the way that large-scale entertainment events adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic by working on events like The Tony Awards, The U.S. Open and New York Fashion Week. I witnessed the shift that took place in the entertainment industry due to the pandemic, and I had the opportunity to learn first-hand how the event publicists adapted to the constant changes surrounding the state of the pandemic. Within the event publicity space, things were constantly changing so I quickly realized the value of working strategically and being able to adapt to sudden changes. Being able to have a hand in helping plan and execute the communication surrounding these major industry events, especially during this time, was truly an amazing learning experience.