This story is featured in the Fall 2018 edition of the HPU Magazine. Below, learn about HPU senior Cassandra Diaz’s internship experiences and HPU’s intentional process has helped her and other students land top-tier internships across the country.
The road to success was not a straight line for Cassandra Diaz.
But Diaz, a senior, knows it never is — for her or anyone else.
Diaz came to HPU from Wadsworth, Illinois, as a sport management major and set her sights on interning with the NBA. The advisors in Career and Professional Development helped her chart the challenging course to one of the nation’s most competitive internship programs.
“Each student’s journey is unique, but we begin with a solid resume and LinkedIn profile,” says Faith Cochran, assistant director of internships. “Then local internships become a great next step as the Piedmont Triad is home to impressive organizations.”
Diaz found an internship at the Greensboro Swarm, an NBA G-League Affiliate of the Charlotte Hornets, and dove into her role as a business operations and corporate sales intern. She worked alongside the Swarm’s president and developed proposals for new and current corporate partners.
She did work on campus, too, as an intern in the athletic marketing department.
As those opportunities boosted her resume, they gave her the confidence to do more.
By 2017, Diaz’s LinkedIn profile was nearly a mile long and included impressive stints at IMG College, Madison Square Garden and the Greensboro Aquatic Center.
Each experience was a step toward her NBA goal.
In spring 2018, her hard work turned into an offer from the NBA, where she worked in New York City for the summer.
“The Career and Professional Development team have been wholly supportive of my goals and dreams,” says Diaz. “I pop in and out of their offices all the time. Through their guidance and diligent work, I know I’ll have the career in sport management that I’ve always dreamed about.”
Diaz’s journey illustrates how HPU students land top-tier internships across the country. There are others, too, interning at Major League Baseball, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Volvo, the “TODAY” Show, Oscar de la Renta and beyond.
It’s HPU’s intentional process that gets them there. Cochran and her colleagues in Career and Professional Development show students how dedication leads to their dreams.
“We prepare students to treat their internship search like a class and put no less than two hours of work into it each week,” says Cochran. “That’s because we aren’t only teaching them how to find internships. We’re also teaching them how to find their careers. You need the same skill sets for both searches.”