This summer the RISE Internship Program hosted 20 interns across a number of departments and resorts within the company. The interns graduated this past August and each resort hosted their own graduation celebration. The group at Orange Lake attended a ceremony alongside their department leaders and various leaders at the company. During the graduation ceremony, the interns got to hear from company leaders, presented their final projects, and received certificates along with some kind words written by their leaders. Throughout the ceremony the interns shared their experiences and discussed what they learned. Let’s take a look below at some testimonials from recent internship graduates on what they thought of the RISE Internship Program.
“The culture here definitely stood out amongst any other place I’ve worked so far. Everyone, from start to finish, was super welcoming. How I’ve been explaining it to other people is while the leadership is top down the relationships are not. So you can basically talk to a VP, talk to a Senior Leader, or talk to someone at your same level (an intern) and no matter what across the board you can talk to them the same.” – Jaisalyn Santiago, Brand Services
“My favorite part about the RISE Program is that with Resort Operations, I would move from department to department working at line level seeing how everything worked together. On occasion I would work with the supervisors which culminated into working with the Village Managers, so I got to see a top down view of their perspective and see how everything really works together, which is something I really wanted out of this internship.” – Miles Smith, Resort Operations
“I really enjoyed learning about the people I work with and the guests I work with. I worked with many different departments and many different types of people and they all had the same underlying goal of creating great experiences and performing well. It is just so good to see how all that works together. It has been a really, really cool experience and it is nice to see how consistent everything has been from when I started to now.” – Megan Murphy, Resort Operations
It sounds like the interns had great experiences while working here and learned a lot. The RISE Internship Program allowed them to grow in their roles as well as build lasting relationships with each other and team members throughout the company. Let’s look forward to the future internship classes!
