Alumni Spotlight: Kaitlyn Aussenheimer

My experience with the Washington Internship Institute was one of the most rewarding experiences I could have asked for. To start off, the housing at the institute is some of the best housing in Virginia, located right near a metro station, a whole foods, a mall, and awesome places to eat and go out with your WII friends! Staying in Crystal City was one of the highlights of my internship, as well as the classes and the internship itself. I was lucky enough to be able to become an intern with the Center for Responsive Politics, also known as Open Secrets, an awesome, non-partisan think tank where I was responsible for coding and learning where the money is exchanged in the hands of Washington’s elites and PACs/Super PACs.

It was one of the most interesting and motivating internships due to the training that the center provided for me in Tableau, Microsoft Access, and SQL Coding. The center also provided their interns with happy hours, or social hours, so we could meet one another and network with the entire team. There was even a day when I was able to travel to the Thurgood Marshall Building right near the Capitol Building and discover President Donald Trump’s list of Supreme Court Candidates, one of the many highlights of my internship. As a goodbye, I was given an awesome book that was basically based around my entire internship called Tailspin by Steven Brill, an interesting read about money and funding campaigns in Washington D.C. and that was my gift for interning with the center all summer.

The best part of the internship experience as well as living right near D.C. was being able to be rewarded for class credits while attending two classes at the institute which not only helped me learn a lot about a new subject I was interested in but also taking a class that really strengthened my mode of networking and understanding my career path and professional goals.