Engagement Intern

We’ve designed our paid internship program to give you a meaningful sense of life at a strategy and design company. That means contributing to active projects, participating on a dedicated and diverse team, and receiving training and mentorship to get you started in your career.

The Engagement Intern is a planner and connector and will be part of our growing Engagement Team. Partnering closely with an Engagement Lead day-to-day, the larger engagement team, strategy teams, and design teams, the Engagement Intern will help set up successful project plans, team cadences, and learn to develop the tools that drive their project teams forward. The Engagement Intern will help facilitate conversations, collaborate on developing timelines, and help ensure all project pieces are accounted for and delivered on time. They will help coordinate teams and workflow, support the business operations of a project, and most importantly have enthusiasm for the work SYLVAIN creates. They lean into growth opportunities to learn different types of projects across different client categories. 

In addition to learning by doing, we offer a rich curriculum of learning sessions, workshares, and 1:1 mentorship. You’ll also be invited to our “misfit” kind of fun (team events, game nights, coffee chats, etc.) while soaking up all that an in-person office experience has to offer. 

PROGRAM DETAILS

• When: June 1 - August 7 (10 Weeks) 
• Where: New York City. Working from our office 3 days per week (Tuesday through Thursday), with the option to work in-person or remotely on Mondays and Fridays.
• Compensation: While designed primarily as a hands-on learning experience, this is a paid internship at $20/hr.

CANDIDATE CHARACTERISTICS

We’re looking for candidates who demonstrate high potential to do the kind of work we do at SYLVAIN. We are not looking for people who have necessarily mastered these skills. Rather we’re looking for folks with a keen interest in brands and business, who are highly collaborative, and have a hunger to learn. Folks who are natural problem-solvers with a passion for work that matters, eager to work across categories and challenges, bringing ideas to life with clarity, emotion, and integrity.

Importantly, we’re looking for folks who have a desire to improve across these areas over the course of their internship.

Ideal Qualities

• Multi-tasker
• Relationship builder
• Optimistic problem solver
• Impeccable organizer
• Clear communicator
• Cultural contributor
• Curious by nature
• Team-oriented

INTERNSHIP APPLICATION PROCESS

There are four stages to our candidate selection process:

• By February 2: Apply through our career page and share your interest in SYLVAIN
• February 17: Selected candidates will be invited to join an optional, but highly recommended, virtual information session to meet us and learn more about the internship
• Feb 23-27: Final round candidates will be invited for an interview to get to know you
• March 6: Receive our decision over email

While we wish we could promise personalized follow-ups, it’s often difficult with the volume of applications. We do our best to offer some form of feedback if you don’t proceed to the next round to ensure this experience also serves you.

We understand applying to internships takes considerable time and effort. Thank you for dedicating the time.

TYPICAL INTERN ACTIVITIES 

• Support SYLVAIN engagement team across different projects and workstreams within strategy and design, working on projects across varying capabilities
• Assist in organizing and maintaining project timelines, organizing materials for the team, coordinating internal team meetings, managing and contributing to competitive research, and helping teams stay excited, on track, and upbeat about the work
• Support project meetings, agendas, recaps, status updates, project operations, and post-project retrospectives and wrap
• Ensure client presentations are formatted properly (e.g., proofread, page numbers are correct, and upfront/next steps slides are articulated clearly), speaking roles are clear, everyone has the proper technology downloaded, and everyone is aware of the time constraints of the meeting
• Gain an understanding of the different types of SYLVAIN projects, displaying curiosity and drive to understand the “why” behind our work
• Gain valuable insights into engagement processes and best practices, supporting the execution of these processes to ensure our team consistently produces high-quality work that our clients love
• Always willing to raise a hand to help, even if it is not squarely an engagement team responsibility

ABOUT SYLVAIN 

SYLVAIN is a strategy and design company that makes new human and business value for the Now, Novel, and Next. Dissatisfied with the status quo, we collect unorthodox perspectives and uncommon ways of framing the future. By seeking better answers, and pushing for more purpose, we’re solving the most consequential business challenges of our time—always inspiring, inciting, and provoking progress. 

Founded in
 2010, SYLVAIN is a member of kyu Collective, a group of independently-led companies that share a similar mission. We have offices in New York City; Richmond, VA; Los Angeles, CA; and Amsterdam, NL.

Learn more about us at our website, or follow us on Instagram. And check out more of our thinking on our weekly newsletter: Progress Report, and our podcast: Critical Nonsense.

DIVERSITY AT SYLVAIN

SYLVAIN is committed to building and sustaining a culture that celebrates our diversity and is rooted in community. We recognize that the collective sum of individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, innovation, self-expression, and talent that our employees invest in their work represents a significant part of not only our culture, but our reputation and company’s achievement.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, race, ethnicity, disability, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, natural origin, religion, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. Lending such an array of qualities to our work ensures a human-centered approach to our way of doing things and treatment of each other.

A note on AI-generated responses: We’re not opposed to the use of AI tools–they’re a part of how many people learn and create. But, what matters most to us, is your unique perspective, curiosity, and judgment. Responses that feel generic or heavily generated are unlikely to stand out. So please know that we’d rather read something specific, imperfect, or surprising than something technically ‘correct’ but impersonal.