College interns made their mark in many ways at Seagate this summer, and they made a big difference in their local communities. Along with their work in engineering, finance, legal, HR and other jobs, many of the company’s U.S. interns spent time volunteering with non-profit organizations in their local areas.
Seagate employed 335 university interns in eight countries this year, including 160 in the U.S.
In the Bay Area, 18 interns worked with Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley to assist with its mission of providing critical home repairs to local residents in need. Interns built stairwells with modified steps for the elderly and disabled, made spigot buckets to help with painting dilapidated homes and worked on a variety of other projects. Seagate has a 25-year history of partnering with Rebuilding Together, but this was the first all-intern crew from our company.
“This event was one of the highlights of our internship,” said Asha Zahrt, a law student from the University of Pacific interning in Seagate’s legal department. “It taught us to work together to solve problems in a cross-functional team, just like Seagate’s teams normally interact, rather than on the specific, discrete actions interns usually perform within their groups.”
For the third year, Seagate brought a group of 13 Colorado interns to work on a St. Vrain Habitat For Humanity home-building site in Longmont. Habitat for Humanity provides affordable housing for low-income families. This year’s project was to build a home for a local mom and her four-year-old child. Interns worked in 95-degree heat for eight hours, moving materials and measuring, cutting and applying weather-resistant boards to the home’s exterior frame.
“This was a great way to get involved with the Longmont community and interact with the other interns outside of our normal office environment,” said HR Intern Sarah Budd, a business major at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In Minnesota, 36 interns spent a morning at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), an organization where Seagate interns have volunteered the last two summers. FMSC volunteers hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children in under-developed countries. In just two hours, the intern group packaged 118 boxes of meals for children in Haiti, which equates to 25,488 meals.
“My favorite part was the team spirit between all of the interns,” said Jarren Ford, a computer science major from Wartburg College and an IT intern. “At the start of the event, most of us didn’t know each other that well. We were from different departments and different buildings. I’d say we really came together like a well-oiled machine.”
