Julia Gunther ’20

MobilizeAmerica, Washington, DC

I spent this summer completing an internship at MobilizeAmerica in Washington, DC. Founded in 2017, MobilizeAmerica is a tech start-up that works with Democratic campaigns and organizations all across the country to help them recruit volunteers. Among other services, Mobilize provides an online events platform and automated follow-up to volunteers that sign up for events. While Mobilize is a for-profit company, they are dedicated to helping Democrats get elected.

In my role as the Campaign Intern, I assisted the Campaign Team with onboarding new campaigns to the platform, encouraging inactive campaigns to become better end-users, and providing support for campaigns that are already using the platform. On a day-to-day basis, I created accounts and contacted new campaigns that had just begun to use the platform. These ranged from gubernatorial and congressional campaigns, to campaigns for positions that I had never heard of before, such as Hays County Commissioner Precinct 3. I also spent much of my time responding to support chats from users of the platform. I had the opportunity to interact with people working on Democratic causes all across the country. These support requests ranged from dealing with bugs in the system to helping people with basic requests such as logging in to the platform. While I enjoyed those aspects of my internship, my favorite tasks were the ones where I had a product at the end. One of the projects that I most enjoyed was creating marketing materials for a conference that I attended—The Virginia Women’s Summit. Mobilize is a very young company with a small staff of about 15 people. As such, I had the opportunity to create a one-pager about the company that we were able to bring to the conference and distribute. It was rewarding to be able to realize my vision for the page, which looked great. I also had the opportunity to create a training video that will be distributed to down-ballot campaigns around the country. As the company adds more and more campaigns and organizations, they will be unable to have training calls with smaller down-ballot campaigns and will instead distribute the training video that I created. I’m glad to see that my work will still be useful even after I have left.

While my work was rewarding and interesting, one of the most valuable parts of the internship was the people that I worked with and being involved in an interesting company. As a Political Science major, I did not have very much exposure to the tech world. At its core, Mobilize is a tech start-up, and I enjoyed learning more about the technology used in politics. Some of the most interesting days were the time we spent in New York, in Mobilize’s main office. I enjoyed participating in brainstorming sessions, discussing the company’s goals as Election Day draws near, and meeting all of the computer engineers. In addition to seeing the broad scope of the company, I also developed good relationships with the people I got to work with on a day-to-day level. The Washington, DC office had only four people, including me, which gave me an opportunity to get to know everyone pretty well. All three members of the Campaign Team are women in their 20s who worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, among many others. They were very welcoming to me and I really enjoyed getting to know them. Hearing about their campaign experience made me a lot more interested in getting involved in organizing and campaigns when I graduate. I had previously felt apprehensive about working as an organizer for a campaign, fearing that it required a far more outgoing personality than my own, but when I voiced these fears to one of my supervisors, who has worked on countless campaigns, she reassured me that I could handle it and encouraged me to consider it when I graduate. While I am still unsure of what exactly I want to do when I graduate, joining a campaign is an option that I am excited about and I know that if I pursue that path, everyone I met at Mobilize will be happy to help me navigate the campaigns world. I came into the summer without clear ideas about what I might want to do after college. I am leaving the summer with a better idea of what I might be interested in than I did before.

In addition to thinking more about my career orientation, I learned a lot just by working with competent and confident women who are just a few years older than me. As I developed relationships with them and got to know them better, I was better able to see myself in them and feel more confident in myself. In particular, my supervisor really made it easy for me to get more comfortable. She made an effort to get to know me and helped me become more confident in my work and my value. When I began the internship, I was unsure of myself and my abilities in the workplace. I was nervous that the quality of my work would not be sufficient and was too anxious to voice my ideas or disagree with anyone. Over the course of the summer, I began to realize that I actually was doing a good job and that my voice was valued. It was valuable for me to see these young women who are so confident and to feel respected by them. I see them as role models and I can more easily imagine myself in their position. I will bring more confidence into my next internship and onward into my career. This personal growth may have been the most valuable thing I gained from this internship.

Another part of the internship that was really exciting to me was contributing to the 2018 midterms. Electing Democrats to Congress and flipping the House is really important and pressing to me, and I am really grateful to have spent my summer working on it. More and more campaigns are joining the platform every day and it is so exciting to see the impact that Mobilize is having on the 2018 elections. On one occasion I had the opportunity to visit the websites of dozens of congressional candidates. It was so gratifying to learn a little bit about some of Mobilize’s clients and it was really inspiring to see all of these incredible candidates running for office. In particular, there are a lot of women running in this cycle and I felt so energized seeing how many awesome people are trying to change their communities and the country. I’m really proud to be a tiny part of the big group of people that are trying to change things in our politics today.

I’m really grateful for the experience I had interning at MobilizeAmerica. I learned a lot about politics and technology and I really enjoyed it. I feel more confident in my abilities and I feel more equipped for whatever I do next. This experience made me excited for my next professional experience and for the world after college. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the Williams College ’68 Center for 
Career Exploration and the alumni sponsors of the George J. Mead Internship Fund for this opportunity.