Exploring unpaid internships: Issues of access, equity, and learning

Carlos Mark Vera is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Pay Our Interns. Originally from Colombia, Carlos was raised in California but moved to Washington, D.C. to attend American University. While at AU, Carlos was an unpaid intern at the White House, the European Parliament, and the House of Representatives. He knows firsthand the struggles of trying to survive while interning for free. Under his leadership, Pay Our Interns successfully convinced Congress to pass more than $90 million in funding for interns and has helped nonprofits, companies, and presidential campaigns create their internship programs.

Carlos’ efforts on Capitol Hill led him to be named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree, Echoing Green Fellow, Camelback Ventures Fellow, a Top 20 Changemaker by NBC Latino, and an Aspen Ideas Fellow. He has been featured in the Washing Post, NPR’s All Things Considered, the New York Times, CNN, and the Atlantic. He has also written for the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, USA Today, and NBC Latino. Carlos proudly served in the Army Reserve as a mechanic for 8 years.

Nidia Bañuelos is an Assistant Professor of Adult, Continuing, and Higher Education. She studies the design and implementation of new postsecondary programs for working adults, as well as the assets that low-income students with caregiving responsibilities bring to their education. She has a special interest in the history of “non-traditional” learners and the institutions that serve them.

Josh is the Assistant Director of Research and Public Policy at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). He earned his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with an emphasis on Quantitative Research Methods from the University of Oregon in 2018. His interests include using a wide-range of measurement and assessment techniques, strengthening systems and routines to enhance outcomes, and weaving together multiple sources of data to make informed decisions. At NACE, Josh helps run the research department by developing and administering surveys, analyzing data, and disseminating results to the membership and the press. Prior to earning his Ph.D., Josh was a special education teacher in Eugene, Oregon and the Bronx, NY. He lives in Bethlehem, PA with his wife, son, daughter, and dog.

Annie joined the UMBC Career Center team in September 2018. Previously, she worked as an Industry Development Specialist at University of Maryland, College Park where she built relationships with new employers and created programming in the healthcare and creative fields and supported student athletes. She supports the Maryland Technology Internship Program (MTIP) which provides funding to Maryland employers in the technology space. She oversees the Greater Washington Partnership Digital Tech Credential which is a badging initiative at UMBC targeted towards humanities majors. In addition to MTIP and GWP, Annie supports the Maryland Institute for Innovative Computing (MIIC) which subsidizes technical intern costs at state agencies.

Dr. James R. Jones is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Newark. He received his PhD in Sociology from Columbia University in 2017. His research investigates representation and inequality in American democratic institutions. In particular, he studies the experiences of Black government workers as a way to understand the complicated relationship between race, power, and inequality in state institutions. He is currently completing his first book, The Last Plantation, which represents the first major study of racial inequality in the congressional workplace.

Emily Pettinato is the Workforce Development Specialist at the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce. Her area of focus is on Skills in Scranton, the workforce development affiliate of the Chamber. Skill in Scranton works with local employers, school districts, higher education partners and Pennsylvania data experts to develop strategies that help ensure our regional workforce is aligned with high-priority jobs of the future.

Hongwei Yu is an associate researcher and serves as Survey Director of the National Survey of College Internships (NSCI) at CCWT. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Higher Education Administration and Policy from University of Florida in 2013. His work centers on student learning, persistence, academic and employment outcomes at community colleges and four-year institutions. Hongwei Yu specializes in analyzing large-scale institutional, regional, and national datasets using multivariate analysis techniques. Prior to his work at CCWT, he worked as research associate at University of Texas at Austin, and postdoctoral scholar at Baylor University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dwayne Peterson is a nationally recognized educator and career strategist with over a decade of experience in higher education. He is an advocate for liberal arts education and a thought leader on how to position liberal arts academic programs as a solution to labor market needs and prepare graduates of those programs for careers.

Dwayne is currently the Executive Director of Career Education at New College of Florida, the state’s designated public liberal arts honors college. In this role, he oversees the strategic vision for career education which includes an integration of career education into the academic curriculum as a four-year developmental plan, faculty collaboration and education, work-based learning, prestigious fellowships advising, pre-professional programs, employer engagement, and mentorship initiatives.

New College has been recognized nationally for its distinctive community-driven approach to internships, which reduces student barriers to work-based education by increasing equity and access to paid internships through a strategic alignment of community workforce needs with the College’s academic programs. The College’s community-driven program focused on arts and humanities internships was the recipient of the 2022 Best Practices Award by the Cooperative Education and Internship Association.

Dwayne has served in professional roles at Georgia College and State University, University of Florida, University of North Florida, and the University of South Florida. A certified career development facilitator, he holds a Master of Science in College Student Personnel from Miami University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Florida, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music Studies from the University of South Florida.

Gregory McElveen is Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives at Fayetteville State University (FSU). He also serves as Project Director for the UNCF-funded Career Pathways Initiative, which is designed to assist universities in enhancing capacity to prepare students for academic and career success. In addition, Greg is principal investigator on several grant-funded projects designed to enhance regional economic development through small business support. Prior to FSU, Greg’s positions included Strategy and Planning Manager at IBM, Director and General Manager of a major third-party logistics company, and management consulting. Mr. McElveen earned an A.B. Degree with Distinction in Economics and an MBA, both at Stanford University.

Lana Farley has worked in the field of career development for over 10 years. As the Assistant Director of Employer Relations, at the University of Baltimore, her main functions include the planning and oversight of recruitment activities and events, educating area employers on managing interns, as well as providing coaching to students in the areas of self-efficacy and career search strategy. Lana has experience coaching traditional and non-traditional populations, which includes incarcerated, international, and first-generation college students. Lana holds a B.A. in Psychology from Salisbury University, an M.A. in Human Sciences from Hood College and is currently pursuing her Ph.D in Higher Education Administration at Morgan State University. She is MBTI certified and is also a Dependable Strengths facilitator.

Matthew T. Hora is an Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education in the Departments of Liberal Arts & Applied Studies (Division of Continuing Studies) and Education Policy Studies (School of Education), and is also the Director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. His interdisciplinary work on active learning, organizational change, college internships, and the nature of skills has brought a cultural and critical perspective to debates on two issues that are dominating the higher education landscape around the world – instructional reform and student employability. His current research program is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is focused on providing rigorous empirical evidence on issues related to college internship access, quality, and outcomes to partner institutions that include community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and regional comprehensive universities in the U.S., China and Japan.

Rachel Lipson is the Director and co-founder of the Project on Workforce at Harvard, a cross-school, interdisciplinary Harvard initiative that brings together the Malcolm Wiener Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Managing the Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Most recently, prior to Harvard, Rachel was Director of Special Projects at Year Up, a workforce development training provider that create pipelines for 18-24 year olds without BAs into high-demand roles at some of America’s leading companies. She has previously worked on economic development at the World Bank, on workforce training investments at JPMorgan Chase, and in training and organizing on President Obama’s re-election campaign. Rachel is an alum of Harvard College and the joint MBA/MPP program with Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School where she was a Rubenstein Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. Rachel’s graduate thesis on community colleges for the State of California was awarded the Kennedy School’s Fischer Prize for outstanding research on social policy and she also has been awarded a Harvard Certification of Distinction and Excellence in Teaching. Her writing has been published in the Boston Globe, Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Forbes, New America, Newsweek, and RealClearPolicy and she and her work have been featured by C-SPAN, the Economist, CNBC, Reuters, and Bloomberg. Rachel previously served as a volunteer contributor to the Biden-Harris campaign’s workforce policy committee and as a member of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the STEM Workforce.