Week 1 as an AHA Intern

Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to welcome Rebecca Portman to our team! She is a student at Northwestern University who started her internship with us at the beginning of the year. Her responsibilities include contributing weekly to this blog, beginning today with her introduction below. Welcome aboard Becca! We hope this will be a very positive and productive experience for you!

Greetings from the American Heart Association’s Chicago office! My name is Becca Portman, and I am interning with the AHA’s Midwest Affiliate in Illinois for the next ten weeks. To share a little bit about myself, I am currently a junior at Northwestern University majoring in Social Policy. At NU, I have been involved in various civic activities ranging from voter registration to labor organizing to direct political campaign work. On a personal level, I have developed a passion for health and wellness, and I hope to find a career that combines those two interests in some form.

I will be working (almost) full-time at the AHA this quarter in order to fulfill my school’s Practicum requirement, getting hands-on experience with real-world policy issues. I will graduate from college in December of this year, and I frequently get questions about what I want to do when I enter the “real world.” Much to my parents’ chagrin, at this point, I still don’t have a clear answer! That’s why I feel extremely lucky to have found a position here at the AHA. During my stay here, I will be splitting my time between the Advocacy, Quality Initiatives, and Health Equity departments. I have the opportunity to get an inside look at the workings of the AHA, learn about the various arms of a large, non-profit health organization, and understand on an intimate level how they function as one. I am excited to try my hand at lobbying, coalition-building, event planning, and much more. In the past three days I was able to learn and present a PowerPoint slideshow about cardiovascular health for community groups, attend a videoconference about Health Strategies with the leaders of the Midwest Affiliate, meet with some incredible women from the National Association of Health Services Executives, and have lunch at the Berghoff Café (a Chicago institution, I’m told) for the first time. What a week!

Over the next ten weeks, I can expect to learn a ton--both about AHA and about myself. I’m sure there will be some things that I am good at, and plenty of things that I am not, some things that I enjoy, and some that I could certainly do without. I will write here every week to share my experiences and musings on life as an intern, and bring fresh eyes to the many health issues faced by AHA staff members on a daily basis. If I do my job right, I will provide some valuable work and help AHA accomplish its mission while getting a better idea of what I want to do with my life. Stay tuned to see how things go!