In some ways, New Canaan High School senior Fiona Risom already has gained plenty of work experience.
A competitive sailor, she’s been a junior instructor for seven summers and has her sights set this year on getting paid to run her own class at a yacht club in Westchester.
Risom also worked as a paid coach for the New Canaan Lacrosse Association last spring.
Yet—until now—she’s never worked in an office setting before.
“I’m hoping to get experience,” Risom said after school Thursday, speaking of her participation in the NCHS Senior Internship Program. Starting May 18 and through the end of the school year, Risom will intern at Ladies Who Launch, a local company that helps women execute their business plans.
“The woman I am working for, Kathy McShane, she is very experienced, she’s an entrepreneur,” Risom said. “I want to learn more about her businesses, networking and how branding and marketing work.”
New Canaan High School senior Fiona Risom. Credit: Michael Dinan
She’s one of 80 New Canaan High School seniors participating this year in the school’s Senior Internship Program, an increasingly popular option that sees graduating seniors gain what is often a seminal introductory work experience by spending the last month of the academic year working on-site with area businesses as opposed to the classroom.
Now entering its fifth year, the program has grown since its inception from 12 participating interns, to 30, then 40, 72 and now 80, Susan Carroll, coordinator of the College and Career Center at NCHS.
Diane Knetzger, senior vice president and director of marketing at Bankwell, said the bank sees the NCHS Senior Internship Program as an “important community initiative.” Said Knetzger: “We’re glad that we can play a small role in helping them transition from school to a career-minded path.” Credit: Michael Dinan
New Canaan’s program is distinguished, Carroll said, in that it allows students to self-select by actively pursuing an internship (rather than making it mandatory), then works diligently through a Steering Committee to find the right fit, tailored to each participants’ interests.
“They have to be motivated to do it,” Carroll said. “They work so hard for 12 years, and here they think they should be able to take their foot off of the gas pedal for the last month of school and not do anything, except these kids do something completely different.”
Participating businesses often are looking for an extra set of hands during the summer “where maybe business picks up,” Carroll said.
“Several business do want help with social media and certainly these students come with great skills, and frankly, anyone who hosts an intern, you have to believe they like what they do and want to pass that enthusiasm on somehow to a young person who may possibly enter their field.”
She added: “Having an intern is not always the easiest thing, because they have to be managed, so for the grace of these people to do it, we are very, very grateful.”
Tucker Murphy, executive director of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, has been on the program’s Steering Committee since it was founded, and her job has always been to help find the right locations for the students.
For the first time, the program this year drew more prospective sites than students, Murphy said.
“I think it is just another example of how the town partners—the ‘power of partnership’ concept—to keep these kids in their businesses and also they’re getting something out of it,” Murphy said.
“We are very selective about how we place them so that they are really quality internships. The committee spends a lot of time finding the appropriate sites for these kids to go, and we feel very proud about that.”
Sites range widely, from Harborwatch at Earthplace in Westport where water testing is conducted, to marketing, finance and human resources work at Nielsen in Wilton, Carroll said. The district has the most placements, with 15 students at Saxe and the elementary schools, she said.
One local business, Bankwell, has hosted interns in past years and is “delighted to participate” again, said Diane Knetzger, senior vice president and director of marketing.
“It’s a great way to expose students to the ‘real world’ of business, and an important community initiative,” Knetzger said. “The interns who have worked at Bankwell have been enthused and engaged, and we’re glad that we can play a small role in helping them transition from school to a career-minded path.”
For most high school seniors, practical work experience is entirely new, Caroll said. Some 70 percent of high school seniors have no work experience beyond babysitting, she said.
“They get a fish-out-of-water experience where they dress differently, behave differently and use a side of their brains that perhaps they don’t necessarily get ot use as often because they’re in a school setting where they’ve been doing the same thing for 12 years, so this is a really different experience for them,” Caroll said.