Isabel Meyer, '21

November 4, 2020
Senior's internship gives her experience working with brands
If you’re a Richmond student, you’ve most likely been told to, “network with alumni,” at some point from a professor or career advisor. Senior Isabel Meyer is proof that the Spider network is strong and can lead to incredible opportunities.

The University of Richmond awarded Meyer with a UR Summer Fellowship to support her internship at Vaudeville Ventures (VV), a boutique digital consultancy in New York.

“I was referred to VV by Richmond alum Lauren Ilsley, ’20, who interned there the summer before me,” said Meyer.

At VV, Meyer had various responsibilities as their Strategy Intern, including conducting competitive analyses for clients, project management, generating social media content, and pitch deck creation.

Her projects ranged from working with publishers on the novel The Ugliest Word, to creating a brand strategy with startup Brightly. But, Meyer was most proud of her work on a presentation about “big data,” a term used to describe the non-traditional strategies and technologies used to gather, organize, and process large datasets.

“For this project, I presented to the company my findings about big data’s overreach into the lives of American civilians via social media and invasive data farming. I was inspired by the potential ban of TikTok to dive into this topic more through the lens of national security as it pertains to foreign intervention in American tech,” said Meyer.

Despite COVID-19 converting her internship to a remote one, Meyer assured her experience was still positive.

“Interning remotely enabled me to be very independent, given I was not working in an office side by side with my colleagues,” she explained. “I would encourage that other students who intern remotely not be afraid to ask questions and do their best to develop a relationship with your co-workers by setting up times to learn more about their career and path.”

Learn more about UR Summer Fellowships.