Growing Destinations

The Intern Experience

• Experience Rochester • Episode 64

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Ever wondered what it’s really like to work behind the scenes in city communications or live entertainment? Join us for a revealing episode where three young professionals, Emma Mehl, Anna Soltau and Cade Roepke, take you through their dynamic internships in Rochester, Minnesota. Discover the ins and outs of drafting press releases, managing social media, engaging with the community, facilitating promotions and even writing speeches for the mayor. This episode is packed with insights into the growth, confidence, and hands-on experience that internships can provide.

City of Rochester, MN
Experience Rochester, MN

Bill Von Bank:

The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.

Emma Mehl:

The advice that I give to other interns is to say yes to everything, because even if you try something and it's not something that you'd like or want to continue in, you have that experience and the knowledge that that is not a path that you want to go down but at the same time, there's a lot of reward in knowing that that could be something that leads you down the path that leads to your career and is something that you really want to work with.

Cade Roepke:

Don't put yourself in one box just because you paid for an education that maybe you thought you'd be interested in. I think getting an education and understanding that education is only half the thing and half the experience is important.

Anna Soltau:

Have your expectations and double it. You will be doing so many like amazing things that I never would have thought I would be capable of, and just to realize that this is a stepping stone for my career is just. I'm so proud of myself for just making it this far.

Bill Von Bank:

Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics, from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Vaughn Bank. Internships are more than just a stepping stone into the professional world. They offer young talent the opportunity to gain hands-on experience, build valuable networks and develop skills that are essential for their future careers. Today, we have three remarkable young professionals joining us. They are completing their summer internships and are here to share their experiences, lessons learned and how these internships are shaping their career paths. Joining me are Emma Mell, anna Salto and Cade Repke. Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Before we get started, I want to learn a little bit more about each of you where you are from, where you have gone to school or are going to school, and your major field of study. Let's start with you, emma.

Emma Mehl:

I'm from Wadena, minnesota, so for those of you that don't know, it's by the Brainerd Lakes area. So small town, small school. It was nice growing up there and just get to know everyone. Everyone knew me. My parents worked at the school. So nice small community to grow up in. I completed my bachelor's in communications at the University of Northwestern in St Paul. I did that in three years, so I'm a little bit younger than a usual grad. Just personal stuff I like to run, I like to read, I love being around people. That's one of the things that I really appreciate about this internship and getting to be around people and really just getting to connect with them. So that's a little bit about me.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna, how about you?

Anna Soltau:

I'm from Zambroda, so right in between Rochester and the Twin Cities, I'm currently going to Minnesota State University, mankato, and I'm majoring in marketing. And then I'm currently going to Minnesota State University, mankato, and I'm majoring in marketing and then I'm also doing kind of a special interest in computer science and like design type of stuff. I have a large interest in athletics so I like to stay very active along with like weightlifting, running, reading, hiking, camping.

Cade Roepke:

Gade. I'm from Prior Lake, Minnesota. I attended the University of North Dakota in 2020. Kind of started when everything hit the fan, you could say, and I completed my degree with a Bachelor's of Business Administration in both marketing and management, and I really enjoyed my time at the University of North Dakota North Dakota Mostly the most notable thing up there is the University of North Dakota hockey team and I spent a lot of time going to a lot of games and hanging out with a lot of good friends.

Bill Von Bank:

Great Thanks to all of you. And you're all interning in Rochester, minnesota, emma and Anna, both with the city of Rochester, and Cade with Experience Rochester in the Mayo Civic Center. So I want to learn a little bit more about your internship experiences. Let's start with you, emma. Can you describe your role and responsibilities with your internship?

Emma Mehl:

Anna and I are both communication and engagement interns with the city. So what we do is we are writing the press releases that go out, we are helping write speeches or talking points for the mayor. We do a lot of community engagement, so almost every event you'll see us at the table. We're the ones that load up the van, take everything out, set it up and then stand there and just talk to people, which is a really fun way to meet people in the community. We also get to film things for social media and take pictures and we get to do a lot of concerts. So one thing that I find really fun and I've really enjoyed that we've both gotten to do is announce at the beginning of concerts. I love that kind of stuff, so that's been a really fun opportunity. You also get to sit in on different meetings and, yeah, we just get to learn a lot about how the city runs and what goes into it.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna, you are learning real time. The marketing and communications world Tell us a little bit more about your experience in that.

Anna Soltau:

I just completed my freshman year at school and at first I didn't know for sure if I wanted to do marketing in general and coming to this internship, I've learned so much just about public business With our internship we sit in during these very important meetings that I feel like I am so underqualified for and very interesting. With that I'm learning definitely a lot and also like working with almost public faces and people that work for the city and serve others. It's just really rewarding to know that I'm a part of it, like something bigger.

Bill Von Bank:

Kay, tell us about the role and responsibilities you have in your internship being that I'm working for both Experience Rochester and Mayo Civic Center.

Cade Roepke:

It's kind of a dual role, definitely wearing multiple hats in this role. So on the Experience Rochester side being, it's more of a destination marketing organization, I'm doing a lot more social media and community engagement type things, and then for the Mayo Civic Center it's a lot more of email marketing and more live entertainment promotion, ticket giveaways, all that sort of thing, and of course it's only a small amount of what it is, but that's just a little bit of what I'm doing for both organizations.

Bill Von Bank:

And you're learning a little bit about podcasting too.

Cade Roepke:

A little bit. I have been behind the production on the podcast for the past couple months, so it's interesting to actually be in front of the podcast.

Bill Von Bank:

Are there any tasks or parts of the internship experience that you really gravitate to?

Cade Roepke:

I think the most interesting are the ones that I can build on my education. So, of course, social media was a huge focus of my educational career because it really transformed marketing. So anything that I can relate to my education I've been gravitated toward.

Bill Von Bank:

How about Emma and Anna? Anything just really jump out that you've really latched on to and really like about the internship. I'm sure there's a lot of aspects that you like, but something that really jumps out.

Anna Soltau:

Something that I absolutely love doing is reaching out to community members and being a public face. They'll be like, oh, you're the girl from the city tent and they know, if they have any question to ask, that they can ask us and we'll help, direct them where they can get more help or we can help them right away when we are doing community engagement activities. Another task that I never thought I would have loved is creating graphics for social media, so I spend a lot of time just on my computer in the office. It almost feels like an art project, like it's super cool to be working on. How about?

Bill Von Bank:

you Emma.

Emma Mehl:

A couple of things I gravitate to. I definitely love the events and the community engagement. Like I said, I love being around people. So, yeah, getting to help people and seeing the community members that you serve on the back end every day is such a great thing to just see the impact is actually working and is actually impacting these community members that are coming to our events. So love the event opportunities. I also love writing, so the public speaking and writing thing. We were able to help out on our internal newsletters so I loved writing articles for that and going through and editing so that and then anytime we get to speak anywhere that, like I said, with the announcing stuff, I love that kind of stuff. So those are the parts that I'm really gravitating towards in this internship.

Bill Von Bank:

What's the most challenging part of the internship for all three of you?

Emma Mehl:

One surprising thing that I found was really challenging is again with engaging with the community. We'll go and, like at one concert we were told to bring these cards and ask if people wanted to take our survey or engage, and of course people say no, and personally I don't love that. Or we'll be tasked to go to businesses and ask can we hang up this poster to show what we're doing and go get more outreach, and you have to put yourself out there and be potentially told no, and I think that's been the most challenging part. But it's also one of those. Once you do it, you get a lot of confidence and self-assurance built because you did it and whether they said yes or no, like you did it and you've grown. So it's been challenging, but once I've been able to push through, it builds a lot of confidence, which is really important for this line of work.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna. What are some challenges you faced?

Anna Soltau:

I said that I love like being the face of the city of Rochester, or being a face just for a short amount of time even, but also your face of the city of Rochester. If somebody doesn't agree with something that they're doing, they will tell you straight to your face, and even if you have nothing to do with it, it can kind of hurt the soul a little bit being told something in a negative connotation.

Cade Roepke:

Kateade, one of the things that really surprised me is the amount of backlash on social media when people feel attacked by something that you created. I guess I always knew that people were commenting and reacting and sharing things as people do on social media, but it's interesting when you're the person putting it out and people get really offended by something that you perceived as middle of the road. I guess it's just kind of a grounding thing and you realize that we all come from different places and have different opinions on things. But some of the more volatile reactions are honestly a little concerning sometimes. But you just kind of have to just keep going and not let it stick with you.

Bill Von Bank:

What are some new skills or knowledge that you've gained during your internship, emma?

Emma Mehl:

One thing that I was completely unaware of before this internship is GIS mapping services. For those that don't know, it's a mapping service that basically you're able to pinpoint parts on a map and then this system is a huge system and people even get degrees for this, and it's something that cities use to plot out points and is very useful for things like development, and it's just all the information that goes on the back end. But they also have what's called the GIS story maps and I was put on to make a couple to have community engagement about different projects that are being done in the city, such as street reconstruction projects. So that was something that I had no clue about beforehand, no prior knowledge, and then was able to do, and it's been really cool to combine an interactive story map and the story that goes with it in interactive story map and the story that goes with it. So getting to use that communication part to write about it and tell the story of the work while also using this really interesting interactive map.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna? How about you? What are some new skills or knowledge that you gained?

Anna Soltau:

I've never been much of a public speaker or like a speech type of person, so I wrote a speech for the mayor or I had assistance also from our communications specialist. I helped write the speech for the mayor and I've never done that before. It was a pretty tough project for me to do because there is a lot of research behind it and even though it's only a 10-minute speech, it's like six hours worth of work just saying these couple of words and I really enjoyed working on it and knowing that she had a very good delivery and other people appreciated her words and you learn a lot about the editing process.

Bill Von Bank:

I bet yes, cade. How about you? What are some new skills or knowledge that you've learned?

Cade Roepke:

I think one of the things that surprised me the most is actually copywriting for social media newsletters, all that sort of thing. When I first started I was way off on what I thought copywriting should be, and I guess over the last three or four months it's really kind of evolved for me into more of a generic approach, I would say.

Bill Von Bank:

So that was really surprising to me how do you feel this internship has prepared you for your future career?

Cade Roepke:

really surprising to me how do you feel this internship has prepared you for your future career? I think it's done a really good job of putting me into a workplace and just seeing how things interact, how teams interact, how people are given roles but are cross-trained more than just what their roles might be. I think that's a really good piece of advice for anyone in college. Like just because you're going for marketing doesn't mean you only will be doing marketing for the rest of your life. Like there's way more cross training and opportunities to step into different boxes and maybe outside of your comfort zone. So I think that's really important.

Bill Von Bank:

How about you, Emma?

Emma Mehl:

I think it's really prepared me in the sense that you get to see, well, anna and I are more on the government side of communications rather than a business type, although I do feel a lot of the skills that we have learned are very transferable to more corporate marketing and communications. But it's just really opened my eyes to see that what cities do is so all-encompassing and how they need everything that a corporate world does. So that's really opened my eyes and made me see that I do love working in government because of the sense of purpose and the fact that there is so much to do. And it's really prepared me in the sense that we get the hands-on experience and you just get so much more knowledge and the context of what is happening in the communications world. And I think that's been the most valuable part of this internship.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna, how do you feel this internship has prepared you for your career?

Anna Soltau:

I have worked with large, diverse groups of people and I feel like marketing now is like you're wearing six different coats with six different duties. You aren't doing just social media posting, you are also working with others and relaying messages, and I just love the diversity I guess is the best way I could put it of all the things that you do. You're never doing the same thing every single day.

Bill Von Bank:

Have your career goals or aspirations changed since starting this internship no my career goals have stayed the same.

Anna Soltau:

I know that I still want to work in marketing and the same. I know that I still want to work in marketing and I love every single opportunity that I'm given through this internship.

Bill Von Bank:

Emma.

Emma Mehl:

I wouldn't say that it has changed, but it's definitely again broadened the context and perspective that I have of what you can do with a communications or marketing degree. So I'd say that it almost has opened my eyes to really the broadness of it and what I can do. So in that sense it's made it less singular, focused and given me more open hands for what opportunities do come my way in the best way possible.

Bill Von Bank:

Okay.

Cade Roepke:

Yeah, I knew, coming out of college with a management and marketing degree that it opened a lot of doors but really no specific doors. So I guess that this internship has really narrowed an idea of what I'd like to pursue in a sense, and maybe some other things that I'm not as interested in.

Bill Von Bank:

Speaking of what you'd like to pursue, do you have some career goals in mind as you complete this internship and get out in the workforce?

Cade Roepke:

I really do like live entertainment promotion. Couple that with my passion for sports and I think I'd really like to work somewhere in that live entertainment space. Not exactly sure what role I would like to play, but I know that that is an industry that, eventually, I would like to work for.

Bill Von Bank:

Emma.

Emma Mehl:

I have a lot of different areas of interest and a lot of places that I would be interested in going in Very long term, I think I could definitely see myself going back to school and getting further education and potentially even a law degree and going into that field. Last summer I was able to work at the US District Court for the District of Minnesota and I love that experience and the judges there are so interesting and cool, so I'd love any opportunity to go down that line and work with them. I also do like event planning or that type of role, so that would also be a long-term goal, and I'd also love to continue working in communications and do any roles where I'd be able to almost be the face of a company and be a representative and do their press conferences and that type of work. So those are the couple different areas that I'd really love to see long term.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna, what are your long term career goals?

Anna Soltau:

My long term career goals is working in the residential real estate industry and also doing sales or some sort of management.

Bill Von Bank:

What was the most surprising thing you learned about working in marketing and communications through this internship, kate?

Cade Roepke:

Yeah, I'd probably just reiterate the amount of backlash you get on a run-of-the-mill post that you would see every day scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or whatever platforms you use.

Emma Mehl:

It's just crazy the amount of passion people have for things that you aren't passionate for, so it's important to remember that, like we're all different, I think what a lot of people who don't work in the field don't understand is the amount of work that goes into really an entire marketing and communication strategy. So I was just kind of surprised about the amount of work that goes into. For example, like you see a post on our Parks and Rec webpage. Well, there was a press release, there was a meeting before that. So just like seeing the backend and seeing the amount of work that goes into these small parts of the entire strategy.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna.

Anna Soltau:

The most surprising is how many people you are actually reaching demographically. Not just one specific type of person is seeing your posting or coming up to your table at a community outreach event. It's more expect quite literally anybody coming and asking you a question or seeing this and either taking it into consideration or not. You are reaching out to more people than just one specific audience.

Bill Von Bank:

What will you miss from the internship program?

Emma Mehl:

Pretty much all of it from the people that we work with, which a lot of people have this conception that people that work in government are really stuffy or mean or you know just whatever you want to think about these people. But everyone there is so kind, so welcoming and intelligent and, first of all, I'll miss working with them every day. But then again, the experiences that we've gotten to have and the cool people that we've been able to meet like we talked about going to events, we get to work with the community and even the other interns we really like working with the other interns in City Hall, so just really all of it, but mostly the people that we get to work with, because they're what makes this internship so great.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna.

Anna Soltau:

I'll honestly miss all of it too. There isn't any part of the job that I don't like. And again, working with others and getting to meet new people every single day is a blessing.

Bill Von Bank:

Cade, what will you miss?

Cade Roepke:

I'll also miss all the people. Of course. It's a great feeling when you walk into the office and every day when you see you know the same 20 people, you see their face light up and they say good morning. I think that's pretty special and different than what I thought corporate life would be. I thought corporate life would be more like people not interested to you know be in the same building five days a week. But it really does make a difference when you see the same people and you go and get coffee with the same people and they're just excited to talk about your day and learn more about your life and what you do outside of work as well.

Bill Von Bank:

And what advice would you give to future?

Cade Roepke:

interns I would say don't put yourself in one box just because you paid for an education that maybe you thought you'd be interested in. I think getting an education and understanding that education is only half the thing and half the experience is important, so that's what I would pass on, emma.

Emma Mehl:

In a similar vein, the advice that I give to other interns is to say yes to everything, because, even if you try something and it's not something that you'd like or want to continue in, you have that experience and the knowledge that that is not a path that you want to go down, but, at the same time, there's a lot of reward in knowing that that could be something that leads you down the path that leads to your career and is something that you really want to work with.

Emma Mehl:

And another thing that I'd suggest is to network with not only your superiors but also the other interns, because those are the people that you'll be entering the workforce in, those are the people that they're going to be spread out, and you just want to have these connections with people like your classmates. You want to have these connections with people so that they're your age, they're your peers, they're people that you will be coming into the workplace with and growing up in the same. You know you'll be coming of age at the same time. So it's really important to not only have those connections with people that are older and wiser than you, but also your peers, which is a really cool thing to just make those connections with.

Bill Von Bank:

Anna, what advice would you give to other interns?

Anna Soltau:

Have your expectations and double it. You will be doing so many like amazing things that I never would have thought I would be capable of, and just to realize that this is a stepping stone for my career is just. I'm so proud of myself for just making it this far. And this is a stepping stone and everyone around you wants you to succeed and just always, again, always say yes, always try and make that extra connection, because these people want you to succeed.

Bill Von Bank:

Well, all three of you are awesome, so thank you for sharing some insights. Mml Anna Soltow, Cade Repke, congratulations on completing your internship soon and best of luck in your career search and life. Thanks for being our guests on the Growing Destinations podcast.

Emma Mehl:

Thanks for having us.

Bill Von Bank:

Thank you for tuning in to the Growing Destinations podcast and don't forget to subscribe. This podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Find out more about Rochester, Minnesota, and its growing arts and culture scene, its international culinary flavors and award-winning craft beer by visiting experiencerochestermncom.

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