This piece is the third in a four-part series about Wellesley-funded summer internships offered through the College’s Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Center for Career Education. These eight- to 10-week placements are available across the United States and all over the world, and they count toward the experiential learning element Wellesley recently added to its degree requirements. In summer 2024, Wellesley provided internship funding for 285 students thanks to funds from alumnae and organizations that allow the College to distribute approximately $1.5 million annually through internship grants and program placements.
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Wellesley’s motto, Non Ministrari sed Ministrare—“Not to be ministered unto, but to minister”—is one students and alums take to heart. This summer, many of the students who participated in Wellesley-funded summer internships offered through Career Education joined organizations that serve others.
Nina Zhong ’26, an economics major, and Shelby Ferris ’25, an English major, interned at the Court Service Centers of Massachusetts Trial Court helping litigants who couldn’t afford lawyers. Working with other interns, law students, and attorneys at the main Boston courthouse, Zhong wrote motions, complaints, and modifications to help clients advance their cases. Ferris, who worked remotely, helped people find the correct court service center for their area.
Ferris says the internship was an excellent experience for future lawyers or social workers. “The bosses make sure you’re never put in any uncomfortable positions,” says Ferris, “but it’s a good opportunity to see if you can stomach working with the public in crisis.”
“You get to hear a lot of different stories,” says Zhong. She encountered clients who were navigating a variety of difficult situations, such as divorce and child custody disputes. “It can be very emotionally draining, but it's also fulfilling, because you’re helping people, and you know their names and more about their backgrounds once you get to work with them.” She now hopes to attend law school after Wellesley to continue working on civil cases.
The people Wellesley students meet through their internships can have an impact on their interests and the course of their careers. Lauren Lee ’26 is a data science and sociology major who interned at the YMCA of the East Bay in California, doing data science analysis for its Head Start program. At first she wanted to learn about the bureaucracy side of things and how the government communicates with local nonprofits. But when she saw the opportunity at the YMCA, she was drawn to learning about the daily lives of the people bureaucracy affects.
Reflecting on her internship, Lee says she deeply admires the teachers and administrators she got to know at Head Start. “The kind of motivation that they have for continuing this work for years and years doesn’t come from a light heart,” she says. “It comes from a place of affection and care. … It makes me motivated to keep searching for the kind of industry that I want to work in and support.”
In addition to teaching them about themselves and the kind of path they might want to pursue, these internships often connect students to future mentors, many of them Wellesley alums.
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Left to right: Kate Liston ’25, Alejandra Robayo Garzon ’25, and Charlotte Hayes ’75, Wellesley in Washington Intern Program Alumnae Coordinator, pose for a selfie during an alumnae event in Washington. -
Lauren Lee ’26 interned at the YMCA of the East Bay in California, doing data science analysis for its Head Start program.
“As a Wellesley alumna, it’s particularly meaningful to me to help bring these opportunities to students,” says Lorraine Hanley ’98, director of internships in the Career Education department. She is constantly looking for new industries and jobs to add to the Career Education portfolio of internships, and often she finds them through Wellesley’s vast alumnae network. Of the 54 internships offered through Career Education, Wellesley alumnae and faculty have a connection to at least 25 of them.
Zhong recalls being extremely impressed while watching Megan H. Christopher ’77, an associate justice for the Suffolk County Probate and Family Court, and she was excited to have a conversation with her at the bench. “I have to admit, she is my favorite judge. Her composure in court and the authority she establishes—she is such a role model,” says Zhong.
Meanwhile, just outside Washington, D.C., Kate Liston ’25 interned at the University of Maryland SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors, a direct services, research, and advocacy organization founded by Susan Esserman ’74 that empowers survivors of sex and labor trafficking to heal and reclaim their lives. Liston’s supervisor was Majaella Ruden ’19, policy and programs advisor to Esserman, the center’s CEO.
“Majaella and I poured our hearts into designing the internship,” says Esserman, who also hired a Wellesley in Washington intern, Alejandra Robayo Garzon ’25, to work with the SAFE Center this summer. “One of my goals in offering Wellesley students an internship is to give them real exposure to Washington and to senior women who have had impressive careers, including prominent Wellesley graduates.”
Liston says she appreciated the thoughtfully crafted range of tasks Esserman and Ruden gave her, from researching the foster care system to attending a conference in Baltimore about child trafficking. “I picked this internship initially just because it was geared toward my general interest,” says Liston, a peace and justice studies major who is passionate about women’s rights and reproductive justice. “But I’ve found from doing the internship that I could see myself continuing to work with an anti-trafficking organization.”
No matter what Liston ends up doing, she will have support from the Wellesley alums at the SAFE Center. “I don’t want to just be [Liston’s] supervisor from 2024,” says Ruden. “I want to be a mentor as she graduates, as she moves forward in her career, as she decides about grad school, and all of that fun stuff.”
“Every opportunity or partnership that [Hanley] forges could be the one that changes an entire student’s trajectory,” says Jen Pollard, the Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Executive Director and Associate Provost of Career Education. “It could be the thing that opens the door for a full-time job or introduces a student to an industry they’d never considered or a place or a culture that they’d never experienced. These are really transformative experiences.”
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The next application cycle for Wellesley-funded internships is from October 1 to November 1, 2024.
To read the first piece in the Wellesley-funded summer internship series, click here, and to read the second piece, click here.