Kate Spradley is a powerhouse, a force of nature. A woman who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, got her first graduate degree in Geological Engineering, and who spent 8 years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Kate is working on transitioning from military to consulting and currently completing a dual degree at Columbia University (her MBA from Columbia Business School and an MA in International Affairs from SIPA).
She came to us with a fascinating story about her summer internships as an internal consultant with the U.S. National Park Service. If your thing is radical community, high-impact change, and beautiful surroundings – well, this is a program you should consider.
We expect you’ll love our conversations with her (and just…her) as much as we do!
Transition to Consultant
Background:
Jenny Rae: Kate, why don’t you just start by walking through as much of your background as you want to and describe your transition to consulting.
Kate: Sure
Jenny Rae: We can go from birth, your parent’s history or you can start at college, whatever you feel.
Kate: I am originally from Maryland; grew up there, born and raised in a suburban community called Katingsville just outside of Baltimore city. I went to college at the Naval Academy. Studied clinical science and from there I served in the Marine Corps for 8 years as an officer. My specialty was combat engineering, which is a broad field of basically problem solving. We do basic instructions, demolitions, some bridging, like support needs like, shower, fuel, and water. The things that you need to survive. I deployed to Afghanistan once as a platoon commander. I deployed on ship. For the second deployment, I was the assistant operations officer of the logistics battalion.
We were constantly planning different initiatives that may or may not fill up and how we can support them. Then I finished up my time in the marine corps. My last three years, at Paris Island South Carolina, which is my corps boot camp and the pipe line there is basically overseeing a small group of trainees getting through the 70-day training cycle. Then I moved up to be the operations officer of the training battalions there, which sends through about 3,000 recruits every year. When I got out, I actually took a year off. I got certified as a yoga instructor and taught yoga to adults with disabilities for year before figuring out what I want to do.
Jenny Rae: Where did you do that?
Kate: In Durham, North Carolina. I was there and I realized that I saw other battalions going through a business school program. The value that it brought in translating our professional skills from the military into relevant skills for the civilian realm. The business program was a polishing school as well. It was more that academics, it was developing these networking skills and understanding what questions to ask and how to connect, I really valued that to grow.
Jenny Rae: Can I ask one of my questions?
Kate: Yeah.
Transitioning From Military to Consulting
Jenny Rae: Just to back up for one second, why did you leave the military? I know that the standard service is 4 but you extended after that.
Kate: For officers, I was a little bit different because I went to the naval academy. I enrolled 5 years as a minimum, I was having a great time so I decided to stay. Basically, it is kind of an indefinite contract, I can stay and continue to do well as long I continue to move through the promotion pipeline. 8 years is kind of a turning point because about every 3 years, we go through a cycle of going to a new duty station with a new set of responsibilities. That was a timing issue; am I going to stay for another 3 years or am I going to try something different? I was having a great time but I just wanted to try a new career.
It was kind of a bittersweet departure because I had had the time of my life. I never… I shouldn’t say never. There was a piece of me that though it would be nice to have a 20-year military career and pieces of me that just wanted to try something else as a professional and get out there.
Not super detailed reasoning but it seemed like a good time. The 8 years in itself allowed me to get 100% GI bill if I had not stayed that long because I had gone to the Naval Academy, I had to stay extra to get 100% GI bill from school, my undergrad.
GI Bill
Jenny Rae: Was that an option that you could use for any program of any duration or… I don’t know much about the GI bill.
Kate: The post-9/11 GI bill provides service members who serve… it is actually something like 90 days after duty. An honorable discharge and everything, 36 months of education, it is 4 years of education and you can use it for some technical training. If you want to go and be a pilot, you can get your pilot lessons off of it, anything you want. The four years is because there are more enlisted than there are officers. It allows the enlisted people to get their undergraduate degree. They are not required to have an undergraduate degree as an enlisted person so I think that is beneficial. I can use it for anything.
Jenny Rae: That 3-year period was when you became eligible for it?
Kate: 100% of it. If I had gotten out earlier, I would have gotten a fraction of the support.
Jenny Rae: That is interesting.
Jenny Rae: It is incremental. So as you stay longer, you get more of it. It is a great program because people can transfer it to family members. Someone who may already have the degrees they want or the education, they can transfer it to a spouse or a child, which I think is fantastic. It actually helps families to continue to have a bit of a legacy instead of continue to struggle to pay for college for the next generation. It really is a great program.
Jenny Rae: I kind of interrupted you. Yoga in Durham, did you have a connection with Durham. I am a twisty-turny history person so…
Kate: It’s fine. I was previously married, my ex-husband was actually getting his degree there. He was getting his MBA and policy degree at Duke. So I actually moved there to be with him while he went through school.
Jenny Rae: That makes sense.
Kate: When I was there. It was in his third year, so he was in his last year. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and something I had dreamed of was getting certified as a yoga teacher because yoga as an injury prevention tool, has been a big part of my life. I though it would be interesting to go deeper into it. I did that there, it was a 21-day course. The studio where I got certified allowed students, the graduates of their program, to teach one hour sessions for free at the studio. They charged customers a very nominal fee to keep the lights on, which was a great experience.
They also connected me with a place called ‘Reality Ministry’, which is a community center for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. They had a yoga teacher previously but she left and I asked if I could be a part of that community.
Jenny Rae: Amazing.
Kate: It was rewarding, it is a whole different experience because it is about helping people work through their own challenges in many different types of bodies and a lot of different modality capabilities. I think it is also really a humbling experience and it made me appreciate what I have. Then I applied to Columbia, all in that.
Applying to Columbia Business School
Jenny Rae: Is that the only place that you applied to.
Kate: My ex-husband had gotten into a school here in New York, so I was looking in the New York area. I was looking at NYU, Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton. Kind of all the New York areas MIT. I was considering commuting and then I thought, that was going to be a lot. I narrowed it down to the two Manhattan located schools and what I found with Columbia… every school is great, it is what fits an individual’s personality. I immediately connected with the battalions club at the business school. I also connected very well with some civilians from business school and just found that I felt at home with the community, I think that is one of the most important pieces.
On the policy side, I also wanted a policy degree. Columbia offers an international policy degree. It is masters in international affairs; I wanted an international focus. That became top of my list.
Jenny Rae: That is amazing. You applied and obviously, you got in.
Kate: Applied, got in. I was very grateful that I was accepted. I applied an early decision to put in business school, that was like number one if I get in, there is no question. The SIPA international school public affairs was a little bit later but it was a nice relief to say at least I am in one school. Then I got into SIPA and could relax for a month or two.
Jenny Rae: Let us talk a little a bit about what you thought your professional aspirations would be.
Kate: Sure
Jenny Rae: Also, if you can explain the breakdown of the way the courses happened.
Kate: Sure.
Jenny Rae: Did you do two years of business school, one year of SIPA or was it one and one. Because a lot of the different combined programs like Woodrow Wilson or with Harvard Kennedy school they do them differently.
Kate: Sorry, what was the first question?
Internships
Jenny Rae: Your professional aspirations going in and also just related to the timeline. Essentially, when were your internship breaks and what were you thinking at that time.
Kate: Originally, coming from public service, that is my personality. I am a public servant at heart and I want to be making an impact. I learned about investing and fell in love with the idea. That was my aspiration basically. Columbia, another appeal to me is that the business school has a relationship with Morgan Stanley and they are a sustainable investing program, which was my initial top internship desire. I wanted to do something of impact; I joined the green business club and the social enterprise club and just started going to panels, breakfast and whatever networking events that they had to learn more about what the different opportunities were.
I care a lot about environmental issues, so I was hoping to find something that would help connect that with some sort of international ambition as well. That was my trajectory. That is that piece and then I would explain my structured course and my internships.
My first school year was at the business school and then my second year was a mix, I did orientation with SIPA in second year but basically I just mixed ever since and I will mix my third year as well. As far as the schools are concerned, what they expect is that you meet the minimum set of requirements and they each get paid for three semesters.
Other than that, it is kind of a two-journey adventure. I actually really appreciate, I had to take the core classes at Columbia business school and I had to take the core classes that did not have equivalences with the business school at SIPA. There are some basic requirements. There is some overlap in core requirements that free up some room to take some classes that I wanted. Outside of those, it is however you want to build your curriculum. I think that is very advantageous. I had two summers and I just had to do at least one internship over the summer. Last summer, I ended up finding my dream of internship, which was intern consulting for the National Park service.
National Park Service Internship
Jenny Rae: Okay. How did you find that? As far as I know, there is not a happy hour recruiting pipeline process like there is for other places.
Kate: Interestingly enough, the social enterprise club in the business school, posted a company, which presented summer internships called ‘Inspiring Capital’. They are an investing company in start-ups but they also do summer consulting programs for social enterprise companies.
Jenny Rae: Interesting.
Kate: They hire MBA’s when they want to do that. We actually had a few in our 2018 class. They also advise companies on whatever they can be hired for, like bigger term consulting. The National Park Service contracted ‘Inspiring Capital’ to do their consulting, when I went to a ‘Inspiring Capital’ presentation, they first presented about their own internship. Then, as a little surprise, they presented about this National Park Service internship.
I wasn’t expecting it, I had no Idea it existed and all of a sudden I heard that, I was excited and shocked. I was like, are you serious? I can do this? I could go live in the National Park for the summer? Yes! Where do I sign? Whatever, don’t pay me, I would be here. It was great so I started going through the application process, I applied to Inspiring Capital’s internship and that National Park Service internship.
Jenny Rae: Okay, great.
Kate: They had I believe three round of interviews, it was a three-tiered process. An application, write some answer questions and an essay of why you want to be a part of their team. Then it was a video interview, which was not live. It was recorded so I was prompted with questions to prepare for and then I would be videoed and I would submit.
My last interview, the third piece for National Park Service was a case interview, it was live but it was via Skype. I remember sitting locked in. In the little reserve room.
Jenny Rae: Study rooms.
Kate: And did it. It was a case interview so it was similar to any consulting case interview. I would say that the biggest difference is that there was a purpose case that requires consideration that maybe doesn’t always… I am not saying it doesn’t require consideration by the company but especially with the government there are these different pieces that have to happen. That is; are we adhering to our mission? I think one of the questions was; if you put in a new RV to get more customers but it creates too much pollution, what is the decision? How do you balance these decisions?
Jenny Rae: So interesting. It is weighing income or profitability matrix with mission driven matrix. The triple bottom line in the case interview.
Kate: Essentially and also the Park Service government entities are not… poverty is a very dirty word in the Park Service.
Jenny Rae: Exactly.
Kate: They need to earn revenues so they need to be on the positive side of the balance sheet.
Jenny Rae: And they do spend money.
Kate: They do spend money, they are a business but their central purpose cannot be about profit, which is interesting during the summer internship to realize that.
Preparing For The Case Interview
Jenny Rae: One of the questions about the case interview. How did you prepare that case interview? Had you done other case interviews preparation? What is the process?
Kate: I read Case In Point. I had a couple of friends help me case and they were going to traditional consulting firms like McKinsey and being a regular staff at Deloitte. I just got advice from them, did a couple of practice rounds and I also had two other interviews with other companies that I thought were interesting but I wasn’t necessarily interested in working for them but I saw that as practice grounds. I did that a couple of times and took a couple of breaths and did it.
Jenny Rae: How math heavy is the national Park Service interview?
Kate: Because I never did any of the traditional consulting, I don’t know quality comparisons, but we had to do math and calculate profit. I guess I should say revenues and do some math on the spot. I think they gave some pretty round numbers, I don’t think they were trying to cut me up or anything like that.
Jenny Rae: Amazing.
Kate: I had to show that I could add, multiply, divide and those kind of basic things.
Jenny Rae: After the case interview, how did you feel? Did you feel like it had gone well?
Kate: Yes. It was kind of messy because we actually got disconnected twice and the interviewer had given me some details that I didn’t get because we had gotten disconnected, bad internet service. I think I liked it because it was about showing that you could go with the flow. I felt good in the sense that I wasn’t flustered, I just kept moving forward. I was so excited, I felt good but I didn’t know if I got it.
Jenny Rae: How long did it take them to notify you, more about the pre-internship process?
Kate: I think it was about 3 weeks.
Jenny Rae: It wasn’t a next day call like you would normally have and this was happening in the spring, so after consulting interviews with other people.
Kate: The application I submitted in December that was at the start of winter break and the actual interview was in the spring. So a lot of people are already set.
Jenny Rae: You had already decided at that point against Morgan Stanley, I am guessing?
Kate: I submitted a cover letter but I think it was telling that I didn’t put a lot of time into it, but that was not my priority anymore. I found this opportunity and it just seemed more exciting to me, so I was okay with that.
Jenny Rae: In general, you knew you were opting out of the standard recruiting process. So your timeline then shifted to an enterprise recruiting.
Kate: Yes.
Jenny Rae: Okay. You got the call three weeks later. Call or email.
Kate: I think I got a call and I was so excited. I said I will think about it and in the back of my mind, I am not thinking about it, I know I am going to do it. I also then accepted ‘Inspiring Capital’s’ internship. It felt really good to have some options. I said I would wait and then I thought about it for two days and I was like I cannot wait anymore. We had about two weeks to respond, I was like okay, this is what I want, I am doing this.
“Inspiring Capital” Placement
Jenny Rae: Did they tell you where your placement was going to be?
Kate: No. That is like the next step. Once we found out we got in, anyone who agreed to do the internship, the next step is basically submitting a wish list of where you want to go and why. Every year, the Park Service is soliciting projects from all the parks. There are 59 national parks but there are 417 units. The national parks are like Yosemite or Badlands. There are also units, like New York city has National Park historic sites.
Jenny Rae: Like the Grant Memorial.
Kate: Exactly
Jenny Rae: The National Recreation Center.
Kate: Yeah. Also the national mall. They are all managed by the National Park Service. It is historical, cultural and I guess you can call it environmental. It is all about preserving these spaces for the enjoyment of us and future generations. They had 9 projects, there are 18 of us, we received a PDF file that detailed each of the projects. It was about one page for each project. It talked about the location, it talked about the state of the actual project we were doing and also what our living conditions would be and what there was to do in the area. It was kind of a balance of work and play.
Jenny Rae: It could be any of the 400 places.
Park Service Internal Consulting Group
Kate: It was 9. In the park service, they have their own CFO office and in there is the internal consulting group, the business management group. They are the permanent internal consultants. I think there are 6 of them. They have an office, 3 in DC and 3 in Colorado. What they do is work on projects long term. They are our supervisors for the summer. They basically solicited project requests from all the parks submit them and 9 of them are awarded interns for the summer.
We as the summer cohort, MBA, some policy students. It is not just MBA, it is some policy students as well. We submitted our prioritization of the 9 projects. It was a long questionnaire of why we would be interested in a certain project and how that would align with what you are studying in school, our future career interests and also, can you handle the lifestyle that is would be.
For instance, one of them was Denali in Alaska. It is not going to be as accessible. The nearest grocery store was about one hour-and-a-half away. Someone who may not be attuned to that kind of lifestyle, you don’t want to choose that even if the project is interesting.
Jenny Rae: You probably know more from Manhattan than you do from the military, right?
Kate: It is giving people an understanding of that type of life.
Jenny Rae: They didn’t have a preference list of projects that was already outlined. They didn’t have; here are the 7 projects that we want to accomplish this summer.
Kate: They had the top 9. I am guessing they had about 30 parks and sites submitted their request for summer interns. The BMD (Business Management Group) looked through all these and they picked these 9. They are different every year. This summer, it is even more exciting.
Jenny Rae: What were a couple of the 9? Just out of curiosity.
Kate: Denali Alaska, Badlands National park, which is where I ended up going. There were gulf coast sea shore down in Florida, South east Arizona, has some sites that someone worked on. I don’t remember some of the other ones. Great Smoky Mountains. There were a bunch, I am forgetting all of them right now though. Catoctin state park, which is actually in Maryland, it is actually attached to Camp David.
Jenny Rae: Interesting.
Kate: There are a number of them. They were all great opportunities.
Choosing An Internship Location
Jenny Rae: When you were thinking about ranking, were you thinking more about living conditions? Did you have any opportunity to meet with any of the people in their different centers? Also, did they have the kind of project listed out for you to pick?
Kate: Yes. I was trying to balance my own personal interests of being somewhere new and different and having a little bit of an adventure, I think it is my personality. Also, working on the skills that I wanted to work on based on the project so it was a balance. My top choices were… I only remember my top 2, so I apologize. My top 2 were Denali, Alaska and Badlands national park in South Dakota. The reason on the personal side is that they were very interesting to me as far as what I could do in the outdoors and explore and be places that I have never been before. Professionally, they offered me opportunities to work on skills that I think would be beneficial. It is like traditional consulting tips skill.
I think Denali was a commercial service project so they wanted to find a way to generate more revenue by having more commercial services provided in the park and improving those contracts with the park service. I thought that was interesting. Badlands was just a cool project and I am glad that is the one I ended up getting. It is actually two parks; Badlands national park and Minuteman Missile Resort site. It is right next to Badland, it is across the highway. It was a pre-planned project, which was complicated but sounded really interesting. One, it was pricing strategy, which was tangible and very easily connected to business school.
Finding Organizational Efficiencies
Jenny Rae: Absolutely.
Kate: The second was finding organizational efficiencies that would save them money.
Jenny Rae: Head count mostly?
Kate: Kind of managing headcount I think. Finding a way that Minuteman and Badlands could share some of their personnel in a way that they could still accomplish their mission on smaller budgets. The superintendents are the leads of the park and they were reading the two ways. Budgets are getting smaller, how are we going to accomplish the same objectives with less funding and smaller staff. We created some models on how they can consider that. The last piece was helping to generate more interest in the Southern half of Badland Central Park, which is where Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is. There is a huge piece of the park that goes unvisited predominantly.
Jenny Rae: Is it drivable or is it mostly back country hiking.
Kate: It is drivable to the visitor’s center but it is a long drive, I think it is like an hour from the main visitor’s center and it is very remote. Pine Ridge Reservation is a difficult area, it is one of the poorest Native American reservations and there is a lot of pine, not a lot of oversight. The police force is internal to the reservation, Indian reservations have their own laws. So it can be scary for an average tourist to go down there and feel comfortable.
There are a lot of good things going on down there, we helped them figure out what their opportunities were. They have tracked visitation and programming and we gave them some great tangible recommendations and also some strategic recommendations on to extract people down there.
Those were the three projects, it was a busy summer but it was incredible. Part of new experiences, you want to understand how to help them. It is important to get out there and experience all the park has to offer.
Jenny Rae: You keep saying we.
Kate: I am sorry.
Team Structure
Jenny Rae: Can you tell me, what is the structure of the team.
Kate: Good catch, there were 18 of us in our summer cohort team park service and we were sent out in teams of 2. I had a colleague with me who was from Yale School of Management and we were a team throughout the summer working on the same projects. I found that to be a really great experience, really interesting for both of us.
A lot of folks that end up doing this internship come from non-finance, non- accounting, non-business backgrounds and it is helpful to have someone else there to level… is this a crazy idea, no, okay, what do you know? What do I know? How do we complement one another? ‘Inspiring Capital’ in collaboration with the business management group did a good job of creating teams where skills complemented one another.
My strengths are in connecting with people, facilitating focus groups, getting out there and understanding a situation. My counterpart was very savvy in the data, technical, and computer skills. We were very good together in creating a solid plan and how to approach these problems and also putting together valuable tools at the end.
Presenting Final Slide Deck
Jenny Rae: In your final recommendations, was that a slide deck presentation? I am just imagining, you are on a height explaining what these things are. Tell me just a little bit about how that resonated.
Kate: Something that is really important… I will start with the final event and then explain a little bit.
Jenny Rae: Sure
Kate: The initial presentation was a slide deck and excel document that was kind of a tool kit and it included recommendations some detailed modeling that the management asked the park to organize their staff how they want to. I would say, the final presentation was more of a closing of what had happened at the end do the summer. None of it was a surprise, all these had been talked through before. Pretty much, we were hand in glove, the superintendent of the park throughout the entire summer. We didn’t go away in a bubble and create ideas and make a final presentation that was surprising to them.
Basically, what we had done was work through all of these, polished this and gave it to them to say, “This is basically what we have been talking about the entire summer. Now I see it is refined over the timeline. Now we can take this and use this as a reference now that you are gone”.
Jenny Rae: That is amazing.
Kate: I think there is a very good blessing in doing consulting in itself. It is not about getting input, going away, making something and saying here is your answer. It is about building a relationship and sustaining it throughout and the people that we supported are not surprised at the end. They should feel comfortable like we have built a relationship. Not that we are not there, they probably need a reference from us.
Government Direct Hire Opportunities
Jenny Rae: Another question; one of the normal carrots at the end of a lot of the internships that are rotational or internal or with senior consulting firms, is the desire to go back full time.
Kate: Yes.
Jenny Rae: Is that a part of the process at all.
Kate: It is. It is a really cool opportunity. As long as we did well I think everyone did well but someone could get kicked out. I was offered a direct hire opportunity of the National Park Service for a few other of the departments interior, if I was interested up to 2 years after I graduated.
Jenny Rae: Wow!
Kate: Hiring in the government can be complicated and it can take up to a year, 18 months to get hired on when you apply for a job. The advantage for me as a partial employee is that I can get hired right on for the park service and the department of interior than I don’t have to go through all the waiting, it is a great opportunity and I have that now in my back pocket. I also like that I can explore something for years and then if I am still interested I can go back.
Jenny Rae: That is a great option.
Kate: The folks that work in the business management group, a lot of them went away for two years, the did the summer internship, did something else and then came back. I think they are all from the 2014 class, I think that it was reassuring that it was a good community to be a part of and they all knew each other. Everyone worked really well together and very professional. My supervisor was also previously in the Marine Corps. He went to Harvard business school and he worked for BCG for two years and then decided, “You know, I am ready to go to the Park Service”. I felt like in some ways I was getting BCG’s knowledge.
Jenny Rae: Exactly. Can I ask another question related to that?
Kate: Yes.
Consulting Internship Compensation
Jenny Rae: A lot of people always ask about compensation, I don’t need to know numbers but I am curious about what the standard in consulting summer would be like. Let us call it 10,000-15,000 per month. How is the National Park Service stacked up on that? If you are coming from BCG and going over there, is it pay cut? The brands that you are naming are pretty incredible.
Kate: It is definitely a pay cut. Do you mean for the internship.
Jenny Rae: Either one. Whatever you can speak to.
Kate: It is a pay cut. I don’t remember how much I got a week but it is probably like half. The business group has a fund for the social enterprise summer fellowship and I applied to that. They basically provided some extra compensation for doing something that was lower price and had a social impact.
Jenny Rae: Got you.
Kate: It is lower paying. What I didn’t have to pay for was my housing or my internet. I got to live in a really cool place for the summer so I guess I saw that as being paid. A running joke with the National Park employees themselves is that they get paid in sunsets.
Jenny Rae: that is amazing.
Kate: It is very true; I can speak to that. It is lower and the actual professional check is a little bit lower. I would say it is about 2/3 in comparison and there is no bonus. You get full healthcare benefits and you can get job stability and cool places to leave. It just depends on what people want.
Internship Supervision
Jenny Rae: Were your supervisors living in the Badlands area in that region or they were in Washington?
Kate: They were housed at DC and Colorado. My supervisor was in DC, twice a week, we did a phone call with him, me and my colleague and he came out to visit once to check on us and make sure that the superintendents were pleased with the work that we were providing them. We did a final round up meeting with him at the very end once we presented to the superintendents.
Jenny Rae: I love that.
Kate: It was great. The superintendent provide a lot of good structure. I don’t know how the traditional consulting firms do it but it was effective in helping us stretch our abilities and we definitely grew. It also kept us on the right trajectory.
Future Career
Jenny Rae: Overall, you said you got through these skills. What did it make you think about your future career that you didn’t think about at the beginning of the summer?
Kate: I think it made me realize that there are a lot of opportunities out there that are not as traditional. I am not against the traditional paths, I think they are so fantastic. I have another year in school. To me, I think that some of these traditional consulting firms are of interest to me, but it also made me realize that I don’t have to just do that. There are so many opportunities…
Jenny Rae: We should be the most risk taking, ridiculous.
Kate: Exactly. Especially, in school, that is the time to take risks and you may fail sometimes and then get back up and learn lessons from that. I think that it made me realize that as I start my actual career recruiting I am going to pursue some traditional routes and I am also going to pursue some non-traditional routes and just kind of see what sticks and what makes more sense for me.
Jenny Rae: Great. I love that. This summer do you have plans?
Kate: Yeah. Again, not very traditional. I am actually working with two professors from business school on an emerging course about bridging the American divide, I was a teaching assistant for the pilot course in the fall. We are working to institutionalize the course and also build some institutional relations with some businesses in Youngstown Ohio that may determine some internship opportunities.
Jenny Rae: Amazing.
Kate: I am really excited.
Final Points
Jenny Rae: Awesome. Do you have any final points just to help. Who would enroll in internal National Park service? Who would it be right for? Who would it be wrong for and kind of any final advise.
Kate: I would say, who would be wrong for first is someone who is very concerned about compensation because it is not just going to be the same as traditional places.
Jenny Rae: Sunsets
Kate: Yes. You are payed in mostly sunsets. Who is it right for? It is right for anybody that enjoys uncertainty, ambiguity, problem solving and wants to try something a little off the beaten path and also wants to have a social environmental mission incorporated into that. I would just throw this in, there were some interns that already signed on with McKenzie for example. I remember this one woman, she had graduated but had done internship to fill a gap before she started McKenzie.
I thought that was great. It is something you can do to gain a little bit more experience and a broader understanding of a narrative that maybe you don’t know it could really be a value added to whatever career path you do end up getting into.
Jenny Rae: Amazing, awesome, thank you so much.
Kate: Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.
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