Our organization just created a formal internship and fellowship program. So we're bringing in young people who are very interested in food security and hunger issues and want to learn. So they're a great help to us and I think we're helping to build their career or give them professional experience. I like to say that I have another full time job. I am blessed to be the president for MANA San Diego, which is one of the largest Latino organizations here in San Diego. It's actually one of 17 chapters throughout the country. It's headquartered in D.C. and our San Diego chapter is the largest with 550 members. That focus on enhancing and advancing Latino women. We take men too. We take women of all colors, all shapes and sizes. So we do not discriminate. We can have MANA brothers too. One of the things that really helped me was actually getting a mentor when I was 12. I think I mentioned to you, that I saw women that looked like me that were dressed up pretty nice. That happened when I was 12 years old. I was at P.B. middle school. I met these wonderful women that came and talked about mentorship program. At that point I was considered an at risk student because of where I came from and because of my background. And these women decided to take us on. There was 12 of us girls and they started mentorship program which is called the hermanitas. That was back in 1987 when I was 12. I just say it to myself. And now 28, 29 years later I'm leading that organization as the president of the organization that changed my life. So it's been 28 years of mentorship, of women support. So now, I'm at the helm of this organization and I want to pretty much give back. So there's 550 members that I can count on for any kind of support. And at the same time, I have women that have come before me, that I definitely look at for mentorship support, at all levels. If you're looking to transition or you're looking to kick off your professional career, the key to all of this is getting involved. I think internships are important as a student and as a new graduate. But I think work experience is also part of that. And there's your academic education which is critical, but there's also the ability to go out and develop the skills that you need to be helpful in the workforce. One of the issues that we have in the industry, is that you've got a lot of kids graduating from college that they've really never worked and so they don't have the skills that they need. And yet there's employers that need to hire people and they're looking for people with the right academic credentials, but they also need people that have the skill set. And one of the things that led me to that over the years is the fact that, when I was in college I had multiple jobs. And I started working when I was a teenager for my father and for a local restaurant, and you learn about service, and you learn about hard work, and you learn about all the things that you don't want to do for a living when you grow up like dig ditches and things like that. And I think all of those things led me to where I am today, which is gave me the skills and the abilities to do a lot of the things that I do now, and it's just that background not only the skills but also the work ethic. So, when we started Pharmatech Tech, one of the problems that we had was that, we didn't have developmental chemist. It's a very specific type of chemistry person. Very specific type of scientist. And we could have gone to the east coast and hired folks that have this skill, but they would have cost us a lot of money. And so, we decided to start the intern program where we would hire juniors and seniors out of UCSD, bring them into the lab, teach them the skills that we needed to support the work that we were doing. But at the same time, give them the skills they need, to be able to find a job when they graduate. And over the years, we've had hundreds of interns and at any given time we have about 40 in the company and once they have graduated and worked for us for another year, they're fully capable of handling projects and they've become amazing developmental chemists. About two thirds of those kids, I mean they're all very smart and they're all looking for this type of experience. About two thirds of them go to medical school or graduate school, which is why the pool has to be so big. About a third of them will stay on and become employees at Farmer Tech. And if you look at our management team over the last 17 years, it's almost entirely UCSD students from 10 years ago that have moved up in the organization and become managers and leaders. What I did was went out looking for externship and internships that I could do. And I knew some folks at Amblin, got to be friends with the general counsel there and he offered me a position. Unpaid internship which was very difficult at the time, because I was newly married and I had to take a position that didn't pay initially. But after a year, they said hey you're doing a great job. We're going to start to pay you. And then that led to a position as the low man on the totem pole in the legal department. I interned at the local public radio station and then got an internship to work on a campaign. And it was this thing called participation 2000 and it was started by the former governor Richard Celeste. And then was a coach before they brought on a senator from New Jersey Bill Bradley to do it. And basically what they did, is they trained you for two weeks and then they sent you to wherever. It was a political action committee that gave stuff instead of money. So I was placed into Kentucky and I became the assistant director of the coordinated campaign for Kentucky. So that was very interesting because I was a California girl and I was back in Kentucky. And from there I started hatching my plan of what I wanted to do. I volunteer in politics when I was in college and high school. And working in Kentucky made me realize maybe I didn't want to be part of the process, but I wanted to be part of something. So I decided to go to journalism school. And while I was there, I applied to journalism schools and I ended up going to University of Missouri, which has a very good journalism school and got my master's in journalism. My first job out of journalism was working at an alternative weekly in Silicon Valley and I covered city government and then I covered whatever crazy thing they wanted me to cover. It was really interesting I mean, all sorts of stories. And then I moved to San Francisco, worked for a business magazine in San Francisco and then moved and worked at a business magazine in Indianapolis. Decided it was too far away from family and I was a California girl and I came back here and moved to San Diego, ended up working at publication's in San Diego, and then landed a job at the San Diego Union-Tribune. If anyone wants to get into journalism, you need to do internships because that's a way to prove yourself. And volunteering is critical too. And that's actually in politics. That's how a lot of people get their jobs is they become the world's best volunteer and they show their chops and they show their loyalty to that candidate. And if the candidate gets elected, then they're in a good spot to get a job. And that's the same way it is with everything else. And it's also for cruise which is it's a great way to do a test drive. Right? you don't have to jump in. Here's the career you can. You can volunteer. You can do an intern a three month internship on the side to see if that is something that you're going to enjoy. If it is right, if what your perception of the job is it reality.
