Through the Internship Coordination website, curated by Professor Goetz and at her suggestion, my search continued with the AIGA Virtual Job Fair where I had the opportunity to inquire and converse with representatives from 17 design companies from Team to Gallagher & Associates to Champions Design to Kettle, and more. This job fair was quite an insightful one as it gave me little peek into these companies and their practices, ethics and overall ethos. I was able to inquire about their hiring practices, qualities they look for in internship candidates, workflow and recent projects, and my biggest question of all, how do they contribute to make the industry more inclusive to Black designers. Of all these companies, I was most pleased with Kettle, who literally have a mapped out inclusion plan for the utmost racial and sexual inclusivity. It was a delight chatting with Alyssa Buono and Richard Sancho about Kettle’s pledge to end the pervasive and systemic racism rampant within the industry.

My biggest take away from this job fair was the opportunity to further expand my network by connecting with these prominent industry professionals. Also, I was glad to see that they are actually willing to connect and are responsive to questions and advise beyond the setting of a job fair.