Meet the 2022 Edelweiss Ascend Interns

Samantha Correa, a student at CUNY City College, has always loved reading, but she only recently discovered a passion for book publishing. 

“I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t get into this publishing thing sooner! And, the answer is that I wasn’t aware of it as an opportunity. I didn’t know that there is a whole industry with plenty of career paths for anybody who loves books.” 

Tyler Ryan, a senior at Spelman College, concurs. 

“For me, growing up and heading into college as an English major, the only options people presented for me were to be a teacher or to try to be a writer from the get-go.” 

Over the summer, Samantha and Tyler have been able to learn more about the business of book publishing as two members of our current cohort of Edelweiss Ascend Interns. Ascend is the arm of Edelweiss through which we work to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the industries that our company represents—publishing and tech. The Ascend internship program is designed to help students gain exposure to roles in these areas.  This is the fourth year for our tech internship and the second for our publishing internship.

“The Edelweiss Ascend internship program is aimed at creating opportunities for folks from underrepresented communities to see themselves in publishing or tech and to provide mentoring for these students from experts in the business,” says Linda A. Duggins, Edelweiss VP of Strategic Partnerships who leads the company’s Ascend initiatives. 

Three other students round out this year’s cohort and entered the Ascend internship program to learn about software development: Nia Berry, student at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University; Kyle Walker, rising senior at the University of Michigan; and Chidozie Nnaji, senior at Southfield, MI's University High School Academy. Kyle and Chidozie both joined the program via Edelweiss’s partnership with Wolverine Pathways, a University of Michigan-based program that facilitates the academic and professional development of students from under-resourced communities in Michigan. 

“The tech industry really excites me,” says Kyle. “Every year we keep getting new, unexpected innovations, and it is cool to see how technology changes over time.” 

Nia, Kyle, and Chidozie are being hosted by Edelweiss itself, where they work with Edelweiss Chief Architect Chris Kempton, Software Architect Kris Tokarz, and the rest of the Development team. This summer, the interns' projects have focused on Edelweiss Community and the development of the Events area on the site.

"I think it is important to provide opportunities for all people to work in technology— it opens doors to people getting their ideas out there. All of us are such frequent users of tech but to see the other side of your phone is a really powerful thing,” says Chris. “Our interns have been fully embedded in our software team, so they've gotten to see this firsthand."

"It has been awesome to invite the interns onto our team and see them contribute to the implementation of a new event overview page. We began mapping this work out last fall, so it’s exciting to see it come to fruition! It will improve the user experience for exploring and sharing events in Community and will provide us with a strong foundation to keep iterating on," says Ally Jarjour, one of the developers at Edelweiss leading the work on Community.

On the publishing side of the program, Samantha and Tyler are each working at one of our Ascend Internship partners. Linda coordinates with our partner organizations to find a good fit for the publishing interns’ interests and, once placed, Ascend covers a stipend for the students. 

Samantha is at Rock Inked Inc., a creative management company based in New York City, where she is learning all about book marketing. Samantha is mentored by Rockelle Henderson, a 30-year veteran of the book publishing industry. 

“I appreciate this internship program because it gives me the opportunity to pass all I know on. Whereas when you work in the publishing house, there is no time to pass it on because you are doing the job of twenty people. You can’t help the next person as much as you’d like,” Rockelle said at a recent internal panel discussion with the Ascend interns and partners. 

“This is part of the issue publishing has with anyone who is non-white. Because if you get into that world and you don’t see someone who looks like you, you are already intimidated and then you don’t know who to talk to. This program gives people the opportunity to learn what goes in publishing by putting them in the right internships.” 

Tyler is currently working at Tessera Editorial, an editorial company composed of all BIPOC publishing professionals. She supports its co-managing editors Grace Wynter, writer and editor, and Yasmin McClinton, editor and author writing under Yasmin Angoe. Both Grace and Yasmin came to publishing later in life and emphasized at our panel discussion that the work towards a more inclusive industry must be intersectional to truly make change. 

"When I was Tyler’s age, there was no concept of getting a job in publishing. I literally never saw anyone like me in publishing—I barely saw anyone like me writing books," said Grace. "So I feel for the thirty, forty, and fifty-year-olds for whom the doors were sealed shut when they were in college. I’d like to see more internship opportunities for older folks to experience the industries they’ve dreamt of experiencing but never thought they had a foothold.”

"There are some of us [people of color] in publishing but, because there are so few, that puts a tremendous amount of stress on those few that are there," said Yasmin "There are so many expectations placed on those few people, and you get burned out quickly under the responsibility of letting more people who look like you into this place that is so hard to get into. So, we definitely have to open publishing up. Not only to people of color but also people who are older and looking to have a second career."

This year’s cohort began their internships in June and most of the students will be finishing up by August. Linda notes that she is excited for the group to go out and share all they’ve learned with others. 

“Something we think a lot about here at Edelweiss Ascend is mentorship and one of the big things that excites me about the interns is that they too will become mentors to their peers and, in the process, hopefully help more folks consider careers in publishing and tech,” she says.