August 12- August 16

My last week of my internship was extremely busy. I was helping Holly Erickson create new limited edition boards and that took up most of my time during the week.

I did not attend any meetings besides when I re-met with the product development team and Janet to go over the fit and style guide again to make sure they agreed with all of the changes.

We had an internship "graduation" where we had a chance to voice what we liked and didn't like about the internship. We also found out if we got accepted into the Executive Management Training program.

I am really excited to announce that I have been offered a full time position with the product development team of Chico's FAS. I will be moving to Florida officially in February. It is such a huge opportunity and I look forward to starting my career with an amazing company.

August 5-August 9

Projects

This week I completed the Fit Guide and will be presenting it to the PD team and Janet. Any corrections that they suggest I will change and resubmit to them next week.

I also worked with Sarah on trend and concept for the upcoming year 2015. I helped her choose the correct color swatches and then labeled them all and distributed them throughout the Foundations and Apparel teams. We also updated all of the teams color boards, and started to go over what the themes were going to be.


Meetings

This week I attended a touch base with Holly. Holly and Janet really want me to come back once I graduate and work for Soma. I would first have to do the EMT program (Executive management training) and then Holly and Janet are going to pull for me to get placed back with Soma. With the EMT program it is all based on the head count of each company, and how many positions HR has to fill. The best part about the EMT program is that even if there is not a position open for you yet, you are still getting full salary while you are waiting.

I attended an interview event this week, this was to apply for the EMT program. Each intern who wanted to interview had three different interviews, two with the department you are interested in, and one with someone from HR. These interviews were very conversational and I think that I did very well.

There was a Product development meeting this week to go over all of the fabric and print issues. We also looked at new faux fur to add to some of our limited edition collections. Laurie really liked the idea.


Presentations

This week was very busy with final internship presentations. Last week all of the 11 intern groups presented in front of about 30 people, and the top HR people chose the top three groups to present to Dave Dyer (CEO) and Sara Stensrud (VP of HR). My group was one of the top groups, so this week we spent a lot of time watching ourselves present from the first presentation to HR and worked on what needed to be fixed. Knowing that we were going to be presenting to Dave Dyer is a huge accomplishment but also nerve racking.

To help prepare for our presentations, Kelsey and I met with DTC and ecommerce to go over what was do-able in a timely manner for our suggestions for the Soma website. This was very helpful, and the team really liked all of our suggestions. The best part about our project is that every change we suggested to be changed had research to back it up.

Holly and Janet wanted me and one other girl from my group to also present to Laurie Van Brunt. This was done in a very personal setting with a little less than 10 people. This presentation was more informal but Laurie was so impressed, she even emailed us the next day expressing how impressed she was and how great our presentation skills were, and that she loved our ideas for the Soma website.

July 29- August 2

Projects

This week I continued to make changes to the Limited Edition concept boards. I started designing the new Holiday boards and was conversing with the vendors to make changes on the limited edition fabric we have chosen. The concept boards were also presented to the VP's of the foundations side as well as the lounge and sleepwear side. Callout's were made by the foundations team to see if the scale of our embroidery could be reduced because the scale as of now would not work well on panties.

I have also been communicating for the past couple weeks with vendors on styles that have been dropped before they have even gone through production. I requested to do this as part of my project for back at school, and my team thought that it was a great way for me to really get a hands on experience of how the Product development process works. I now have had these samples made and they are for the January and February corsets. The vendors do not know that these samples will not be used but for my learning only I have had these samples produced with my own minor tweaks on print, trim, color and notion choices.

Presentation

This week all of the intern groups presented their SWOT analysis projects. My group came up with enhancing the direct to consumer experience through improving the Soma website. Many of the changes we made were aesthetic but also navigational improvements.

During the week we did a few mock presentations for different people in Soma. Each mock presentation we were given feedback. Our final presentation was in front of about 30 people and were people from all of Chico's FAS brands and positions. The main judges of our presentations were three recruiters from HR.

The recruiters then had to choose 3 of the 10 groups to present to Chico's FAS president, David Dyer. To my excitement my group was chosen as one of the best groups!
So the upcoming week will be a lot of preparation and feedback from others who saw our presentation to make it the best it can be to present to David Dyer and other executives.

Meetings

I attended one of the " Most Amazing Places to Work" Lunch and Learn activities. The e-commerce teams came in and presented all of the information about Soma's social media outlets. All facts were presented and ways of improving each network was discussed. The presentation was very interesting and many exciting facts were shared.

MAPS meeting I attended and all of the cross function teams came to discuss any issues that were going on and what can be done to fix these issues.

I also attended the Lounge and Sleepwear PI Debrief. This was held by HR and each employee was given their results from their PI debrief. We learned what type of person each employee was and what we can do as a team to best support their needs. It was crazy to see how much everyone's PI's were like them. This was a great way to really get to know your teams. I found it really interesting that the cross functional teams were very similar by position and their type of PI.

This week I was asked to interview for the Executive Management Trainee Program which is for current college graduates. The HR team set up time with us to go over what the interview process will be like and to answer any questions about the EMT program that we may have. I am really excited to interview for this.