Internships and apprenticeships are a time-honored rite of passage in many industries. We’ve asked some brilliant folks to share some of the most important lessons they learned during these early experiences in their career.

Stella Musi

Early in my graphic design career, I was working on some invitations and menus for a fancy dinner. I got the text in a Word document and pasted it into InDesign, thinking it was an easy job. Read more>>

Sean Puryear

I got my first experience assisting and working in a boutique owned by my cousin. I would work two days out of the week and helped her with any task needed like tagging clothes, fulfilling orders, and greeting customers. It was also my first experience being left alone when she would leave to run errands therefore leaving me in charge, now this location was small like a showroom but I remember being so nervous that there would be questions I didn’t have the answer to or I would somehow mix the orders up (which I did). After gaining that experience of being left alone at those times being in charge it gave me the confidence that I needed to handle business on my own and the level of customer service I needed to be in a position to manage a retail business rather just a store associate. Read more>>

Diamond T. Williams

I still remember the first day of embarking on my Real Estate journey 10 years ago like it was yesterday. On February 28th, 2013 at the age of 20 years old I started my first day in the corporate real estate industry. With no prior experience in the industry or full knowledge of what my new job entailed and only less than a year of working experience before this, I was so extremely excited and nervous. It was the first day into the rest of my career! Since a young child, I had my mind made up about what I wanted to be when I grew up; a businesswoman and a real estate agent. Always so intrigued by seeing women in leadership roles, wearing cute classy fashionable attire, hosting boardroom meetings, selling properties like hot cakes and making great amounts of money hooked me in early.Read more>>

Abby Case

Many people have taken me under their wing to show me the ropes and give me advice. My most favorite one was when Sheridan Lynne Photography reached out to me out of the blue and asked me to be a second shooter for a wedding. She and I had never meet before. We were both taking a risk, but she saw my Instagram and thought I was good enough to work with her. She is a fantastic photographer, I haven’t seen one photo of hers that I haven’t liked. We meet up and took the 2 hour drive to get to know each other. I got to learn how to second shoot and learn some new poses. She let me use one of her lenses to see how I liked it. She has taught me so much and I am very grateful. Since then we have meet up and done a few shoots together. We both plan on doing more together. Read more>>