Tarahgee Morris, a senior advertising student and Sanjna Pandey, a junior advertising student, have earned spots as fellows in the Multicultural Advertising Intern Program (MAIP). The fellowship is backed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (“4As”) and provides students with 12 weeks of virtual training and full-time advertising agency positions in the summer, along with networking and training opportunities for career development.
Although Morris never received the MAIP fellowship before, he is taking on a position at a familiar agency. Last summer, he had an internship with Ogilvy in New York City — one of the world’s most celebrated advertising agencies — and will return to the agency as a MAIP fellow this year. To Morris, the new lessons he learns will most likely not be about working at a large agency, but rather about how to have conversations focused on inclusion and equity in the workplace.
“I’m most looking forward to meeting like-minded individuals and really being in spaces where I can have those conversations,” says Morris. “And not feel as though I’m the only one who can have that conversation.”
Pandey is taking a similar approach to her MAIP fellow experience. She says that outside of Klein College of Media and Communication opportunities, she rarely has chances to network with professionals, and wants to take advantage of the guidance that her MAIP employer will show her within the workplace.
“I’m hoping that there’s just like people on the team who I can connect with and then do something in the future and build a relationship,” Pandey says.
Pandey is most excited to navigate her new position and see how it fits into what she wants to accomplish later in her career.
“I think it’s just like exactly what I want to do since I have the brand strategy and research and my stat minor. It’s like a combination of those two, so that’s really cool. And definitely the direction I want to go in in the future, so I think it’s a really good start,” she says.
The fellowship also helps build relationships between young professionals. Morris found out about the opportunity when he worked at Ogilvy from his friend, a previous MAIP fellow from another university who encouraged him to apply. Because Morris is involved on campus and in extracurricular opportunities, he has made connections with students around the country who are also MAIP fellows this year. He feels that there are hardly any other programs giving a diverse group of students the openings that the MAIP fellowship offers — and doing it in a way that is not patronizing.
“Schools and programs, they try to meet a diversity quota. And I don’t want to be a part of that quota, I want to be something bigger than that,” Morris says.
The MAIP fellows will begin their summer terms in June, and the program will culminate in a weeklong New York City gathering of all of the fellows in early August. To learn more about the program, visit the 4A’s Foundation website.