By: Andie Lovejoy
Opening new doors can be scary, especially when one leads to your first corporate job, in a new city, in a position you’ve never held before. I learned this summer that the point isn’t to walk through that door knowing exactly what you’re doing. It’s to be willing to take risks, make mistakes, and figure out what kind of work environment feels right for you.
For me, that meant staying on my toes, occasionally having a dog in my lap at work, and creating client work that stood out. This summer, I got to do all three as a Business Management Intern at , an advertising agency based in the Baxter Library in Portland, Maine.
VIA’s motto is “,” and during my internship, I learned just how much can come from taking a chance. I quickly found that the agency was the kind of place where I could learn by doing, ask questions, and discover what I loved.
If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you I was spending this summer as far from Maine as possible. But plans change. When spring rolled around, I didn’t know what was next, but I knew I had to use my time wisely and figure it out. My boss at the Maine Business School, Melanie Brooks, came across an internship post on LinkedIn and sent it to me. I was astonished that an agency working with brands I’d grown up knowing was sitting in my backyard and that they were willing to take a chance on me.
Why VIA
VIA has 50 employees and is employee-owned, meaning everyone is invested in the work they engineer. It is a place where magic happens, and you can see it everywhere, from the unique personalities that fill the office to the client work hanging on the walls. VIA has been named Ad Age Small Agency of the Year twice. It is small enough to know everyone but powerful enough to punch above its weight. That’s also why I chose 91. Its small size has been the reason I got opportunities, not the thing limiting them. Being at a small agency with a wide range of clients meant I was on multiple projects at once, collaborating across departments and working directly with the executive team.
The heart of my summer
I had a hand in a lot of different projects throughout the summer, but one stood out: an intern client project for a nonprofit. Because the work was pro bono, it felt especially meaningful to contribute my skills to an organization that was doing important work in the community.
It was wonderful to work with clients who were passionate about the cause they serve. As someone who wants to work in the nonprofit space or directly with communities, I was inspired by their enthusiasm.
During the project, I wrote the scope of work, drafted the timelines, and led client communications. I spent our early meetings asking questions and staying curious. The goal was to put ourselves in the audience’s shoes and create something that was unique and mindset-changing.
Learning to lead
As a business manager, my job was to lead our pod in the right direction, gather feedback, and serve as the liaison between the client and the creative team. Ideas were often scrapped, and feedback could be rough at times, but I knew it was important to honor the process. Being the youngest intern, I let my fear of inexperience get the best of me more than once. As someone who’s used to doing it all, being the communicator and the supporter never felt like enough.
That changed one day before a client meeting, when I could tell the team wasn’t feeling our most confident. I channeled my inner team captain and gave it my best pep talk. They laughed when I finished and asked if I’d just given them a sports speech, but they thanked me for it more than once after that. What I hadn’t realized was how much my team leaned on me as their backbone.
What I saw as a weakness, they respected as a strength. I had always thought leadership meant having the answer. At VIA, I learned it could mean being the person who helped everyone else find theirs.
What comes next
A few weeks after the internship ended, I was getting ready for school with ESPN on in the background when a commercial for one of our clients came on. I recognized it before I even looked up. I was so proud knowing my fingerprints were on something that ended up on a national broadcast.
You can learn how to manage group work in a classroom. You can’t learn how to understand your client’s reactions or how to keep a team believing in an idea after the third round of notes. Working at an agency taught me how the industry runs, and I’ll carry that into my last semester and whatever comes next. I came back to school with more confidence and with connections that will matter for a long time. VIA took a chance on me, and when I took a chance on myself, the doors opened to so many opportunities.
My advice to anyone considering an internship is to apply, especially when you doubt yourself. The worst answer is no, and a yes turns out to be much more than a yes. VIA has ten principles, and I recommend searching them up, but my favorite is the last: Believe. Believe in the work, in the client, in the people sitting around the table with you, and eventually, in yourself.
Hometown: Columbia, Maine
Graduation Year: 2027
Major: Marketing / Minor: Sport Communication
Internship Title: Business Management Intern
