Week 1:
Settling into Seattle

June 30, 2018

First Day

2,064 miles, 4.25 hours on a plane, and a 26 minute Uber ride from the airport to my apartment, and I’ve finally arrived in Seattle! I began my internship bright and early Monday morning by taking the bus to the Ventures office building in southeast Seattle. Upon arriving at Ventures, I noticed a large treehouse sticking out of the building. I soon learned that this treehouse was symbolism for the buildings initial purpose, which was to make an office building for Treehouse, a local nonprofit which offers support to foster children. The building soon became home to 11 other non-profits, including Ventures!

The Ventures office is nestled on the third floor where there is a beautiful wrap around balcony which employees are encouraged to spend time working, eating lunch, or having meetings on. One of my two internship coordinators, Jen, warmly greeted me when I arrived. I spent the day becoming familiar with Ventures mission and meeting my new co-workers.  For lunch, Jen brought me to Pike Place Market to have Mexican food and visit the Ventures storefront where Ventures’ clients sell their goods.

Background on Ventures

Ventures is a nonprofit organization which gives individuals from low-income backgrounds an opportunity to start their own entrepreneurial ventures. They offer business and marketing classes at a reduced rate and provide services, access to capital, mentorship and coaching to help individuals run successful businesses — or more accurately, microenterprises (a term I just learned, meaning a business that has five or fewer employees and requires less than $35,000 in initial capital).  Ventures supports the idea that with rising poverty rates, the solution of giving individuals the tools to create their own businesses is both empowering and self-sustaining. Ventures provides services for 800+ clients every year. 99% of their clients are from low-income households, 65% are people of color, 32% are immigrants, and 71% are female. Along with this, Ventures also has a brick and mortar store in Pike Place Market where they sell the goods that their clients produce. This is where most of my projects will take place. As an Access to Markets Intern for Ventures, I will be assisting with the Incubation step of their process — helping clients to succeed once their business is up and running.

Ventures Marketplace: Storefront in Pike Place Market

Ok, now back to telling you about the delicious Mexican food I enjoyed for lunch… Jen brought me to a Los Agaves, in Pike Place Market. She was proud to tell me that this cafe was owned by a Ventures client who began his business with the help of Ventures. To see physical (and delicious) evidence of Ventures work in action was amazing! Little did I know, we would soon get to see more evidence of Ventures’ successful work at a pop-up market that was happening in Pike Place Market itself, overlooking the water and the famous Seattle Great Wheel. Here, I got to see Ventures clients selling their goods, and I even got to speak to a few of them about their products. Afterward, we went to the storefront where 70+ Ventures clients sell their artisan goods year-round — from beautiful handmade jewelry to delicious canned goods there was something there for everyone.

Projects

One of my major projects during my internship is to make sure that each vendor in the Ventures Marketplace has an accurate physical profile in the store next to their products to share their story and inspiration. This week, a bulk of my work included taking inventory of the vendor profiles which already existed and designing a new vendor profile to fit the needs of the clients. I had a lot of fun putting my love for design to the test and getting feedback from my marketing co-workers on the design I created.  A couple of my other projects during my time here will be to design and implement an email receipt for the store, and create a social media playbook for the rest of the year.   

Overall, it was a great first week, and I’m excited to see what the rest of the summer has in store for me!