Week 6

Since I have been enjoying my social life so much, I haven't yet written in great detail about my internship. So this week is going to be a catch-up update on some of the projects I have been working on thus far. To help everyone fully understand my intern responsibilities, I will first roughly explain how my office is set up. There are 9 principal lobbyists in the firm and 4 legislative assistants. The legislative assistants work primarily with 2 principals, supporting them and doing whatever they ask. Further down the food chain, there are 3 interns, all from The Washington Center. We have each been assigned to a legislative assistant, so we support their support of the principals.

mCapitol Management is trying to guide their future business development by focusing on a few select areas in which they have an expertise. To this end, the interns here have been tasked with researching the trends in those areas of expertise. This has been a good challenge for me because, through my research, I've gained a solid understanding of a broad topic, which I previously knew nothing about. I started my research by checking out Senate and House committees that are relevant to the business development areas. The committee websites have valuable information on recent legislation and hearings. I have also learned to use various political publications, such as The Hill and Roll Call, which provide good background. It took awhile to wrap my brain around the whole issue, but after some time and a lot of reading, I started to get a feel for the issues that future legislation might address, and the priority of the legislation. We interns have completed the first research stages of the issues, and the next step is to investigate potential clients that could be affected by future legislation. This is a whole new set of research that will require a whole new set of sources.... Good for keeping interns on their toes!! It is interesting to see how a business manages its growth and steers that growth in a specific direction. There certainly is a lot of research that goes into making business decisions.

Anther project I have been working on that involves the whole office is the expansion of mCapitol's National Network. mCapitol wants to develop a large affiliate program with other firms across the U.S. to help when their clients need local representation. I and my fellow interns are facilitating this process by meeting with the principals to discuss expanding the list of potential affiliates. So those are some of my work details! I will try harder to stay on top of my internship updates from now on.

And even though this is my work-focused blog, I will still sneak in a little social news! I don't have very many good pictures from this week, except one from the Common concert that I attended with two of my roommates last Friday. My roommate, Liz, somehow managed to get us in VIP and we stood right in front of the stage. It was FABULOUS!! I was taking a picture of Common during the show when he took my camera and took a picture of my roommates and me in the audience. So here is that picture: