A Day in the Life of a Gather Intern
Hi! My name is Amanda Youman, and I am a rising junior at Vanderbilt University studying Engineering Science and Engineering Management. This summer I worked for Gather running student outreach and assisting with communications. In my role, I worked to increase the amount of students using Gather, as well as to refine Gather’s message and outward communications of our technology. It was an amazing opportunity to work out of the University of Chicago, experience the tech startup culture, explore Hyde Park, and meet a ton of inspiring Chicago activists and organizers! Here’s a day in the life of a Gather intern:
8:30 am — Leave for work. Since I commute from Oak Park to Hyde Park, I’ve gotten the full Chicago public transit experience this summer (lucky for all my coworkers they simply have a 5 minute walk to work). I’ve essentially tried every method of transportation Chicago has to offer, besides water taxi. After spending the summer travelling from the West side to the South side, feel free to reach out if you want to hear me rant about the inequity in public transportation in Chicago! Until then here’s a picture of me with my beloved Green line stop.
9:45 am — Arrive at work. One of the best perks of working for a tech startup is the flexible schedule! I’m not really a morning person so I love coming in later, although some of my coworkers prefer an earlier start. Our office is at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which is an incubator for venture creation and technology commercialization within the University of Chicago. It’s really exciting working in a space filled with so many creative and motivated people. I always thought I wanted to work in a formal office space wearing business professional clothes, but after this summer I realized that when you eliminate those structures, the focus is truly on the work.
10:00 am — Team meeting. We regularly come together as a team to brainstorm different ideas and concepts for Gather. Alex, our CEO, will lead the sessions and typically there’s about 8–10 of us in the office for our meetings. Given the fact we are a political activist technology start-up, our team has an awesome fusion of political science and engineering students. This mix creates an interesting friction of ideas sometimes, and ultimately produces a stronger product. Sometimes we do digress though….
10:30 am — Meeting with organizers. Depending on our project at the time, we are often meeting with the organizers who inspire our platform. This has allowed me a glimpse into the world of activism this summer, and I’ve met some of the most incredible people. When we were planning the Families Belong Together — Chicago March with 30 other organizations, such as ACLU and Indivisible, being a part of the planning process was extremely exciting! There were so many details of a march I never thought of, and accommodating 60,000 in downtown Chicago was definitely not easy. Charlie, the Comms Director, and I worked with other organizers to create strong, uniform media messages for the event by preparing a social media pack. This experience gave me a greater appreciation for intersectionality in social movements and taking an active role to make all groups feel welcome. There were so many stakeholders involved in Families Belong Together, and I saw everyone work to strike a balance between fighting for their organization and for the greater cause.
12:00 pm — Lunch time :). Unfortunately (for me) Hyde Park has a lot of food options so it’s really hard to motivate myself to pack a lunch. Sometimes Polsky has catered food for the Accelerator program and nothing gives me life more than free food, so thank you Polsky ❤. Although some days everyone works while they eat, we also have team lunches where everyone puts their screens down. Our team is comprised of students from UChicago, Vanderbilt, Boston University, Northwestern, University of Toronto, and Cornell so it’s exciting to hear about everyone’s different schools. There’s never a dull moment, such as Rob explaining to me why anyone would donate so much money to a political campaign, everyone weighing in on Marley’s strong opposition to marriage, or Nancy and Kate trying to get everyone to come to their cat’s 1st birthday party.
12:40 pm — Visit an organization. There are so many grassroots organizations in Chicago that are truly uplifting their communities. At Gather we work to inform these organizations of our platform and help them create a Community on Gather to communicate with their members and our wider user base of activists. I’ve also personally loved using Gather this summer because it’s connected me to some really cool events I wouldn’t have known about otherwise (my boss likes to remind me that’s the whole point of our platform when I get excited about it but I can’t help it — it’s so useful!). One of the best organizations I visited this summer was I Grow Chicago. Charlie and I went to I Grow’s benefit concert to cover media and interview some of their members. I Grow offers Englewood residents a safe place with programming and activities at their Peace House and Peace Garden. They are built by the community for the community. Check out their website to learn more!
3:00 pm — Research. As the lead of our student outreach, I work on identifying potential partnerships and contacting education programs about amplifying their voices on civic education with Gather’s technology. There’s a lot of people in the education space working to bring experiences to students outside of the classroom, and I’ve loved hearing about everyone’s different projects. During the research process it’s definitely a lot of reading and digging through the internet, but once I’ve identified a good fit, everything goes quick with reaching out and setting up a meeting!
4:10 pm — Sometimes we need a break! 53rd Street has lots of food places and shops so sometimes we walk around and get a treat. And when it’s 7/11, we get free Slurpees :).
4:30 pm — Meetings. This summer I have met individually with several student and education programs. I really wanted this specific role because I personally found Gather when I was trying to get more politically involved. I was super intimidated by politics in high school, yet I had this energy for change that I didn’t know where to channel. I realized that I could’ve found my voice through activism in high school. I want to connect students like me to Gather so that they, too, can take control of their political and civic engagement and become leaders in their communities. We are working with several groups to connect students to Gather, such as Illinois High School Democrats. Here is Marley, Nancy, and I meeting with Joe Maino, the recently elected State Chair of ILHSDems!
5:30 pm — Random projects. I love that beyond my job description, I get to help out with whatever else is going on. Especially because we are in the world of politics, sometimes we are responding to the craziness happening in the administration. Other times there are various events that pop up, such as planning our huge fundraiser — From the Ground Up — in just two weeks. There’s also a lot of freedom in the work we do at Gather, so if there is ever something I feel inspired to pursue, I can just let Alex know and go for it. Such as designing some awesome Gather merch (check out our web store coming soon):
6:00 pm — Go home. Since I come in late, I leave late. Back to the green line!
Given how dynamic the job is at Gather, every day is different! There’s also lots of exciting activist events happening on the weekends in Chicago, and we usually show up as a team.
If you are interested in working with Gather, please reach out at info@gatheractivism.com. We are always looking to grow our family and hire interns during the school year.
