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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Our guest for this episode is Rachel Beld. Rachel is the president and CEO of the Vista Chamber of Commerce in California, where she leads efforts to support local business growth and community development. With over 20 years of experience in economic development, strategic planning and program management, she has expanded the Chamber’s impact through workforce development programs like the velocity summer internship program and so Cal, which stands for student opportunities for awareness and learning. Rachel is a strong advocate for smart growth in housing, health, health care, access, child care, solutions and infrastructure improvements, all aimed at attracting and retaining talent and Vista. A first generation college graduate with a bachelor’s of business administration from National University, she is passionate about fostering a collaboration between businesses, local government and community partners to ensure a thriving future for the region. Rachel, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you the opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Rachel Beld 2:21
Thank you, Brandon, hi everybody. Hi Chamber Champions. I’m Rachel Beld. And I guess something interesting about me is I love going to concerts. I go to a lot of concerts. Some people take vacations. I go to concerts. So that’s something interesting about me. I love live music, all different genres.
Brandon Burton 2:40
So about how often do you find yourself at a at a concert?
Rachel Beld 2:46
Well, they come in clusters. It seems I might go a month or two without a show, and then just over the last two months, I went to 12 concerts. So they come in clusters, which is not friendly for my wallet, but some a show will pop up and I’m just, oh, I can’t miss it. I have to see that person, or have to see that that group. So, so what’s
Brandon Burton 3:07
been one of the best ones you’ve been to? If you had, oh gosh, like the best one? Well,
Rachel Beld 3:13
I mean, there’s so many really great concerts. I mean, I took my daughter to Eris tour with Taylor Swift, that was amazing. But also, I think a bucket list for me was to see Paul McCartney and I had amazing seats. And I don’t know, singing, Hey Jude, with Paul McCartney and 25,000 of your closest friends was a pretty surreal moment.
Brandon Burton 3:36
That is cool. Those are, those are both great, great concerts. But I also
Rachel Beld 3:40
love really small shows too. I don’t just see big things. I like local folks too.
Brandon Burton 3:45
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the VISTA chamber, just to give us some perspective before we get into the topic of our conversation today, give let us know about the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set the stage.
Rachel Beld 4:01
Sure, sure. So the VISTA chamber, we’re in North County San Diego. We are 101 years old, which is great, because I don’t feel like I look a day over 95 so that’s good. And our we have about 550 members our budget. So our budget has grown pretty significantly in the last few years, partially because of some of our workforce development initiatives, but our budget is 1.2 million. We have a team of six, and that includes a workforce development employee as well a coordinator. And we are in North County San Diego, and there is a there are quite a few chambers in our area, and all of the chambers, we all offer a little bit different flavor, and we’re all friends. So each all the chambers in North County San Diego, the CEOs, we get together once a month for breakfast and to collaborate and talk about regional issues, which I. Think is unique and special. North County is really collaborative in a lot of industries, but the chamber world, especially, I
Brandon Burton 5:07
think that’s so important, especially in certain parts of the country, where you have people that may live in a certain area, but they primarily work in another and there’s a lot of value in collaborating and making a stronger larger community. All together. Now that’s, that’s fantastic. And I learned before we hit record. You guys have a podcast too at the VISTA chain. We
Rachel Beld 5:30
do, we do it’s, it’s actually called the velocity the VISTA chamber podcast, and we interview the movers, shakers and change makers impacting VISTA and beyond. So it’s fun. Check it out.
Brandon Burton 5:41
I love it. Big fan of chambers podcasting.
Rachel Beld 5:44
Like it
Brandon Burton 5:46
whenever I can.
Rachel Beld 5:46
Thank you.
Brandon Burton 5:48
So for our topic, for our conversation today, we decided on the topic of focusing on the paid internship program that you guys do there at the VISTA chamber and and I think there is, as we get into it, there’s lots of elements of it that can be replicated at other chambers. So get ready to do some R and D as we get into this episode and rip off and duplicate some of the things that Rachel and her team are doing, and we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Rachel, we’re back. So I love the idea of paid internship programs. I mean, I love the idea of internship programs, really, but if you can pay these interns, make them feel recognize the value that they bring to an organization is that much better, but also to get the buy in from schools and the business community and all that. So talk to us how you guys have gone about structuring this, getting the buy in from all the different parties and in the successes you’ve seen from it. That’s what everybody wants to know about,
Rachel Beld 8:37
right? Sure, sure, if it’s okay. I want to start with the kind of the idea for the program, because I think that really influenced how we developed the program. And so, you know, back during COVID shut down, and shortly thereafter, you know, a lot of our members were struggling to find talent, especially at the entry, entry level talent, and we were hearing, you know, for everyone, that they were having a hard time hiring. And then also, around the same time, I was working closely with our school district and our superintendent, and we’re talking a lot about students, and data around students and Vista, a pretty significant number of our high school students have paying jobs while they’re in high school. And then also, the statistic was something like 94% of Vista Unified graduates need some sort of paying job after they graduate high school, whether they go into two year school, four year school, grade school, they need some sort of working paid opportunity in order to keep going to school, or they enter the workforce completely. And so, you know, thinking about our businesses needed talent, our students need jobs. And just thinking about about connecting those dots. And at that time, the city, our local city, was going to receive a pretty. Significant amount of ARPA money, so COVID Relief dollars. And so I had this idea that maybe we could help businesses who were strapped for cash have some additional talent, help students connect with businesses in our community, and maybe we could use some of those COVID Relief dollars to fund the whole thing. And so I went to our city council and I gave a proposal. Actually proposed a lot of things, but this one stuck. And, you know, I went to our council and proposed this program and asked for a chunk of money to as a beta test to get this going. And so, and let me also just say that I grew up very low income. I grew up in a family where I worked basically full time since the time I was 15, and I had an opportunity in high school to intern as a as an unpaid intern at our local hospital. And when I told my parents about the opportunity, my dad said, Well, really need you to work over the summer to make money. You need you can’t we need your we need your help in this family. And so I had to turn down an opportunity that I think could have been important to me at that time, and so that that also really weighed into this idea of paying students for the summer. We don’t want someone to quit a paying job in order to have an opportunity to advance their their career exploration. So anyways, the city Vista gave us a grant. We were able to launch the program, and the grant funded it for about two years and for two, almost two, almost two full summers and and so then, and basically the program exists so that we hire students as chamber employees. We hire them as chamber employees. We cover the workers comp, we cover the insurance, and we match them with businesses that that match their career interest. And the students work 100 hours over the summer months, and they’re paid by the chamber, and they’re assigned to, you know, an offset, you know, a business location. And they work, they get mentorship, and they have the opportunity to work, and we picked 100 hours very strategically. The 100 hours was so that the students could keep their other summer job, but work 100 hours over about an eight or nine week period. It’s easy to do that, but also it’s enough amount of time that you can do a meaty project, you can really get a good understanding of whether you like this career or not, whether it’s something that might be interesting to you. So the program started small, you know, we had about 42 kids, and then we had 50 something kids, and then year two, I started our schools. Our school district was really excited about the program, and we were looking for additional funds to keep it going, and the school district said, you know, we have a responsibility to our students to provide career exploration opportunities, and we love what you’re doing, and so we want to fund the program. And so we’re going to contract with you, and you’ll fund, you know, run the program, we’ll pay for it and and then also we can expand our partnership so that for the four credit internships that are offered during the school year, the fall and spring semester, or for credit, maybe the businesses, there’s some connection there where they want to take four credit interns and then they do the summer, you know, paid program. That was a long answer to your question. I apologize for rambling on, but I love this program so much, and so now that the ARPA funds are gone, that we now have entered into a partnership with our school district. And year three, we had 74 students participate, and our goal is to our goal is just to keep growing the program. So I’ll pause there and see if you have a question.
Brandon Burton 13:43
No, I think that’s fantastic. That gives some some great groundwork for the idea how the funding comes that’s always important when you talk about paying interns, where, who’s going to pay for it? Where does that come from? So having the access to those ARPA funds is great. But then for long term, to be able to partner with the school district. The question comes to mind, about the students that I assume there’s an application to apply for the internship program. In the application, are they saying the type of work that they would be interested in, the career paths that they enter they have interest in? And then who is selecting the students. Is the school district involved with the selection now, with them funding it, or how does that look?
Rachel Beld 14:26
Sure, that great question. So there’s kind of a long ramp up to the summer program. So right now, our workforce development coordinator is going to all of the high schools. So we have three comprehensive high schools and two alternative high schools in the district, and then we have some charter schools and other schools that they’re allowed to participate to. So basically, the student attends a school district school, or they live in Vista, they can participate in the program, and the students have to be going into their senior year. So we’re targeting juniors right now that we’re looking that we’re reaching out to. And so right now. Our workforce development coordinator Karen is out talking to students and getting generally some some general sign up interest, general interest sign ups. And we’re asking kids what kind of industries they’re interested in. So then at the same time, while we’re ramping up for the spring for sign ups, we’re looking for businesses in those industries, so that we are kind of queuing that up, and then there’s an application process, both on the business side and on the student side. So, but it’s, it really is student driven. And so the students, they sign up, they apply online. It just, it’s a very simple application. And we, we have, we ask them, it’s a check the box, because they don’t know what industries are. They have no idea. So they say, you know, they can check the boxes of what kinds of industries they’re interested in. There’s also some fill in the fill in, you know, fill in, short answer questions. So really, just trying to to glean what, what do they want to do, what are they interested in doing? And so then we take those applications, and at the same time, we’re recruiting businesses, and we’re asking businesses for what help do you need? What type of give us a short job description for these internship positions, and then we have an orientation, a business orientation, and we have a student orientation. We have an onboarding process and a vetting process. There’s an agreement that gets signed, but the school district really doesn’t play a role in which students get to participate. And in fact, they have a real equity mindset with regard to making sure that there’s opportunities at all three comprehensive high schools, at our continuation schools, that there’s opportunities for everybody. So we have some goals around that. I will say the school district does have a say in which the school district will take interns as well as part of the program, and so they every business, every organization that participates, they actually interview the students. So once we get the list of students, we get the list of businesses the students kind of pick what their top five are. We send every business gets a list of three to five students to interview. Every student, gets a list of three to five businesses that are going to call them, and we say, do your homework on these businesses, learn about them, and then it’s basically mutually matching process. You know? Susie Jane picks company XYZ, and XYZ picks Susie Jane, boom. It’s a win. Now, where it gets a little tricky is sometimes there are students that are, they’re rock star kiddos, right? And everybody wants that kiddo, and then it’s up to that student to choose. But that’s the real world, right? If you’re interviewing and everybody wants to hire you, then you have, you have choice, but also really have a goal that every student that applies and goes through the process that they get placed. So it’s, you know, there’s, there’s a number of steps along the way. So last year, for example, we had about 130 students apply for the program, but we had 74 attend orientation, fill out their paperwork, come in and do what they needed to do, check all the boxes. And so we were able to place all 74 in some sort of internship opportunity.
Brandon Burton 17:59
That’s awesome, you know? And the thought always comes to me when you talk about internships, about these students, that they’re checking boxes on the application of what they think they might be interested in as far as a career goes. But reality is, they don’t really know what options there are for careers besides what they’ve been exposed to, right? So what opportunities are there in the process to maybe expose these students to something new that they wouldn’t have thought of before? How does that fit in with the matching, and is that part of having them interview with with multiple businesses to get that exposure? Sure?
Rachel Beld 18:38
So there’s a couple of ways that we layer in kind of that exposure, because students really only know the few careers that they’re exposed to. What does their mom do? What does their dad do? What uncle so and so and so, if they’re not exposed, they don’t necessarily know what could be possible. Now I will say our school district, the Vista Unified School District, has a pretty robust career exploration curriculum that’s woven into all the high schools, so there’s opportunities for students to learn about kind of what’s out there. And we also have another program called SoCal that feeds into that too, around the exploration piece. But when the students come for orientation, we actually have the all of the job opportunities, all the internship opportunities, listed on a piece of paper, and they can literally read them and circle, oh, that sounds good. That sounds good. Now someone may say they were really interested in HR, for example. Maybe they think they know, and then they see, oh, but there’s an opportunity to be a math tutor at this math tutoring place. That sounds kind of fun, like, I’ll check that out, right? So they can circle what they’re interested in, so they’re never locked into a specific thing. And then sometimes it gets to the end of the program where we have a few students that maybe haven’t been quite matched up or didn’t work out, and we have maybe two or three that we need to play somewhere. Then we just have a chat with them and say, You know what? We have this company over here doesn’t have an intern yet, but. Is what they’re looking for. Would you like to give it a try? You know, you’re going to learn skills, you’re going to learn this and and then they say yes. And sometimes those are our most successful because they say, I had no idea about XYZ industry, and now people want to check that out. I really liked it. And then occasionally it doesn’t happen that often students realize I do not like this, and I do not like this industry, or I thought I really would be interested in XYZ, and I just don’t like it. That’s really valuable, because as you’re going into your senior year of high school and you’re making some choices about post high school decisions, you need to know if you absolutely hate what you thought you were going to love. That’s good information to have at that time. It is. And I
Brandon Burton 20:43
The example I always think of with that is, you know, somebody who thinks they want to be an attorney, and maybe they do an internship at a law office and realize, yeah, I don’t want the stress. I don’t want the time away from family, whatever you know the things are, or they might say, this is exactly what I want, because I do debate in high school, or whatever it is, you know that that makes them gravitate towards that, but in the end, it saves them a lot of that trial and error that most people don’t get until they’ve already invested a ton of money into their education to go down a certain career path, only to find out, maybe this isn’t the best match for me, So I’d love getting these students the exposure, the thought that I had was as we I guess, as you guys are trying to play matchmaker here. How far in advance Are you soliciting from the business community to give you opportunities that you can try to match students to
Rachel Beld 21:38
so we start immediately. Upon conclusion of the program in August, we immediately reach out to the business. I mean, there’s surveys throughout. We have a mid midpoint survey and then a closing survey. But we’re reaching out to folks from the very beginning, you know, from the end of the program the prior year, to give get folks in the queue. And you know, sometimes we have businesses that apply? And they have a position they think is great and it doesn’t stick, there’s, you know, students aren’t interested in that for whatever reason, and so, you know, they can try again, or they can tweak, tweak it for the next time. But we’re already starting to think about that, and we have now that we’ve been doing the program. This will be our fourth summer coming up. We have some data around which industries and what types of jobs are the most in demand, and we also work closely with all of our schools, our school career counselors and CTE coordinators, and they have some good data around what what students are interested in. So we already are starting to reach out to businesses, and we’re cultivating those relationships. And like I said before, the school district hasn’t a for credit program that’s in the fall, in the spring, where it’s only make two or three hours a week for the students. So it’s very small with regard to the the meatiness of the projects that they can do. So we also refer, they refer those business to us, and we refer our paid summer businesses to them, so that there’s that synergy there. So we’re already starting to work on that. And just like we’re already outreaching to students to find out what industries they’re interested in, but it runs the gamut. We’ve had students do welding, you know, we’ve had students want to learn more about being an esthetician or cosmetologist. We have students doing accounting, finance, HR, real estate, social media, podcasting, set design, um, fire at the city doing shadowing in the engineering department, the fire department, fire department, admin at the school district with a nurse, construction trades. I mean, so you every industry, every type of career we’ve had somebody doing that, the ones that are the hardest to fill are actually in the medical, clinical roles because of HIPAA rules and because of the age of the students, that’s really challenging. So oftentimes students are really interested in those, you know, medical pathways, you know, nurse, doctor, those types of things. We have them working maybe in a physical therapy office, or we have them working a front desk, you know, working at a front desk in a doctor’s office that is really difficult to get them those clinical connections. And that’s a piece we’re really working with. We have a community clinic that we’re trying to navigate, carving out a specific area where we can have students do more of those clinical things,
Brandon Burton 24:20
if, if a problem can be solved like that, leave it to a chamber to figure out how to how to get around it and make it work. So I’m sure it’ll come together. So you mentioned earlier that you hire these students as chamber employees for the duration of the internship. Is there any considerations to be mindful of for other chambers that are doing their R and D right now, as far as hiring them as as employees,
Rachel Beld 24:45
yes. So the reason we do it that way is one, so everyone has a similar experience with regard to payroll, clock in, clock out, it makes it easy and we can, we can really manage and make sure that the student. Students are given breaks that they’re treated appropriately. We want to make sure, you know, of course, we’re vetting these companies, but you know, we want to make sure that everyone has a comparable experience with regard to that. But there are some considerations. So we have some things. We’ve had some serious conversations with in our insurance company. We don’t allow students home based businesses. For example, we don’t allow students to work in someone’s home. If someone has a home based business and they’d like to do this program, we have been able to establish some remote internship opportunities, or our office is actually in a co working space. And so we’ll allow students and businesses to meet, not every day, but on occasion, meet at our space to connect. So that’s a consideration. Obviously, we don’t want teenagers working in someone’s home. Also, we don’t allow students to ride in a vehicle anybody else’s vehicle. They need to have their they have to ride in their own car or their parents car. They can carpool with another student, and we’ll actually do some carpool connections. Will that’s a consideration. Transportation is a big piece of it, but we don’t allow it students to ride in vehicles we have. That’s one of the things too. Like, for example, we had some students interested in trades like H back or plumbing, things where you’re making calls to people’s homes or residences. And so unfortunately, our members in those areas which we have a number of of those types of members, we’re not able to have students right in those vehicles. So either they have to work at, you know, at the plumbing office, or if they have a plumbing supply store, they could work there. But where we’ve tried to handle those types of interests is working with our school district, our city or and or the hospital. We have large facilities. So then students can shadow someone who’s more well, all you know, like, not handyman, but you know, like a facilities manager, person who’s dealing with a plumbing issue and HVAC issue, those types of things. So there’s just some, some considerations. And really, you know, student safety is paramount, paramount to this. And you know, their safety is number one, and then their experience, as far as career exploration, is number two. And then also the businesses, you know, businesses again and again and again, our surveys are through the roof with their satisfaction with the program, because these students are amazing. They knock everyone’s socks off again and again and again. I have a member who had students put together a sales plan, sales strategy for a product, a brand new launch, and it was better than people who had been in the industry for a really long time. They couldn’t believe how great it was. Sometimes a
Brandon Burton 27:42
different perspective, right?
Rachel Beld 27:43
Yeah, exactly.
Brandon Burton 27:45
That’s awesome. So before we really start wrapping things up, I wanted to ask you know, you guys had the access to the ARPA funds to kick this off for you guys for a chamber today who’s looking to start a paid internship program through their chamber. What? What would you advise to get started today, to maybe look for other grant fund opportunities, or just go straight to the school district? Or what would be your your thoughts? Sure,
Rachel Beld 28:14
so both of those could be options. You definitely, you know, we were very fortunate that we had access to those funds to kind of show what we were trying to do and to prove a concept. But I would say, if you’re starting now, if you’re not, if you don’t have a you know, see, it’s hard to get funds if you’re not a c3 we do not have our own foundation. We do partner with the VISTA Education Foundation on occasion, but we don’t have a c3 which has made it difficult for us to find grant funding to continue this program. So if you have a c3 there’s a ton of money for workforce and internships that you can you can get going. And then secondly, you know, for us, the partnership with the school district has been really successful. And so if you’re not already meeting regularly with your school district and your superintendent, or your career technical education folks, or, you know, career services folks, start meeting with them, start having conversations. And find ways that you you know, if you offer to be a resource for someone, and you’re starting to try to help, people are going to want to know what you have in mind. And so just starting those conversations, you know, most schools, most high schools, have some sort of internship or work experience that they’re trying to cultivate. And it the thing about this is it can really be unique to what your community needs and what your community wants. And so I would, you know, you could go straight to your school district. I’m actually have offered for my other local chambers here in North County to go meet with them, with their superintendent, to just talk about the success of the program and share some data. And you know. And then the main things though, is that you want to spend some time working on some really tight agreements with regard to expectations. We have an employee, an employer handbook, or a. Site supervisor handbook, is what we call it, and then also the Student Handbook, so people know what’s expected to want to put some things like that together. But really it just starts with a conversation and an idea. And we think this is something that every student you know if, if I were in charge of the world of workforce, I would have every student who graduates high school with at least one or two actual work, real world of work experiences. I think that’s so incredibly valuable. So, and I will say, I we have, we always have an intern at the chamber, and I think we have a few future chamber CEOs coming out of the program. So, which I’m happy to say,
Brandon Burton 30:42
so that’s good. That’s right. A few years from now, I’ll be doing podcast interviews, and they’re gonna tell me I got my start as an employee at the VISTA chamber through their internship program and other chamber executives. So wait for it. We’ll see it. Yes,
Rachel Beld 30:56
I can’t wait. You know, one thing that we really didn’t expect with the program was that about 25% of the students who complete the internship program end up being offered some sort of ongoing work experience with the business, either part time or either after graduation or it’s a mentorship for now, but about 25% continue the relationship on after the program is completed for the summer.
Brandon Burton 31:20
That’s fantastic. That’s so huge. So Rachel, I like asking, usually people listen to the show to try to elevate their chamber, take their chamber to the next level. For those listening, what kind of tip or action item might you suggest in helping them to accomplish that goal of taking their chamber to the next level?
Rachel Beld 31:40
I think listening is such an incredible thing to do. And if you listen, you know, oftentimes the chamber, chamber executives, we are busy. We are jump out of bed and hit the ground running, and then we keep going until we collapse into bed at night. But if you don’t pause in the busyness of the day, to listen to other, to listen to what’s happening around you, and to look for gaps, look for opportunities. So we have a college that has a great internship program. We’re not talking we’re not trying to take college insurance, because that already exists. We have other we have folks who are doing career pathways, and they’re already working in a specific industry, and they’re pursuing that education and they can get internship. We were talking specifically about we have students. We listened and we saw the need. So we saw that there were students that need jobs. We have businesses that need workers, and we had a pot of money that we could use and about connecting those dots, and those things don’t happen until you can pause and listen and look for those gaps. And I know that sounds that’s not a super tangible piece of advice, but that’s really where this came from.
Brandon Burton 32:50
I like that listen and fill the gaps. Let’s see, see where those opportunities exist within your community. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Rachel Beld 33:07
Well, that’s so interesting. You asked me that because I just wrote an article for our local newspaper about kind of how we’re not your father’s chamber anymore. And you know, I think historically, chambers have been focused on, you know, keeping taxes low. And you know, government advocacy, which that’s still super duper important. Government advocacy is still a huge pillar of our organization. However, when we ask our members what they need, and they say they need talent, then we need to lean in there. And that’s more than just an internship program. You can’t have robust talent without housing for people to live in infrastructure and roads for people to drive on child care that’s affordable, that people can put their kids in child care and go to work and you can’t you have to have good quality health care. If you don’t have a hospital where you can have a baby, then you don’t want to live in that community, and you don’t want to work in jobs in that area. So we’re really taking a holistic approach. You know, I’ve gotten some pushback from folks who say, you know, the Chamber should just be focused on business. And to my, in my opinion, we are. We are focused on business. Business need talent, and you can’t have talent if you don’t have everything else that talent needs in order to live and thrive in your community. And so that means that we have to have housing, we have to have infrastructure, we have to have public transportation, and our public safety has to be top notch. And so we’re leaning in on all of those things where I don’t know that that has always been the focus in the past. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 34:38
now that’s great for anyone listening who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about this program, the internship program, or anything else you guys are doing there at the VISTA chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Rachel Beld 34:53
Sure send me an email CEO@vistachamber.org, or connect with me on LinkedIn. Amber. Rachel Whitley Beld on LinkedIn, so find me and let’s chat. Let’s chamber chat.
Brandon Burton 35:04
That’s right. Chamber Chat, we’ll get your your email and LinkedIn profile linked in our our show notes for this episode, so we’ll make it easy for people to connect with you. Thank you, Rachel, this has been fun having you on the podcast and hearing about the impact you guys are making their investor and and really changing lives of these youth and and supporting the business community and helping to make these connections, playing matchmaker. It’s so valuable, and I hope that other chambers out there listening, do you know, take this program and at least explore the opportunity of, you know, seeing if there’s a need for it in your community, but then if there is to be that driver, that catalyst that takes it and runs with it. But thank you for for sharing your experience and insights with it. It’s so valuable. Brandon,
Rachel Beld 35:52
thank you so much for having me on today. It’s been really great chatting with you about our internship program, and I’m inspired by the folks that I hear on your podcast. So thank you so much for the work you do. If
Brandon Burton 36:04
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